FROM THE HIGHEST YARDARM.

Modern naval ships don't have yardarms or gangplanks, more's the pity. How can one be expected to make an example of captured pirates if you can't hang them from the highest yardarm or make them walk the plank into shark-infested waters? The other day the U.S. Navy rescued the hostage American Merchant Sea Captain Richard Phillips from pirates with some Jack Bauer-like precision, killing the three men surrounding the captain but not hurting him. Odds of a repeat of that performance are pretty slim. More likely they'll go like the previous day's retaking of a yacht by French commandos in which one of the hostages was killed along with some of the pirates.

Of all the problems besetting this world, and there's no shortage of them anywhere, probably the last one world leaders expected to confront is a resurgence of piracy. It's like a time warp, with piracy gaining popularity not only off the east coast of Africa but in the South China Sea and other busy shipping lanes. The only problem is, at least from the entertainment value standpoint, is that none of these pirates are disenfranchised dukes and viscounts fighting against the injustice of an unfair king. It turns out they are your garden variety low-rent thugs armed with AK-47's, the kind of guys who gravitate to drug cartels and criminal gangs. They have very little education or imagination and few skills, interested only in quick easy money obtained by any means necessary.

So far none of them have issued any political demands of any sort, only money. Which is the way it has always been with pirates, but history has a way of romanticizing even the most bloodthirsty of scoundrels. And in the past many of the pirates were entertaining and outsized personalities, you have to give them at least that. You don't hear about any Blackbeards, Long John Silvers, Jean Lafittes, Calico Jacks, Black Barts or Captain Kidds these days. Those guys lived large and killed large, having their own heavily armed ships that were a match for the navel vessels out to capture them. They roamed the Seven Seas in search of booty and were often encouraged to do so by various kings at war with other kings. They were also consummate seamen and military strategists when they weren't engaged in drinking and whoring in some lawless seaport in an out-of-the-way tropical paradise.

Not today's pirates, as anonymous as bank executives used to be, and almost as larcenous. These guys sneak up on merchant vessels in small speedboats, climb over the side with rope ladders and round up the small crews of modern merchant vessels, wait for somebody to drop a couple of million dollar ransom by helicopter and then slip away. No pulling their ship alongside with a brilliant maneuver, swinging onboard with daggers in their teeth and sword fighting with corrupt barons and earls while issuing blood-curdling yells. You don't see pirates with wooden legs, eye-patches or hook hands either, and there's not a one of them who can give you a decent "Aaarrrgghh" or an "Avast, maties!" They don't even have any damned parrots on their shoulders, don't fly the scary black Jolly Roger flag sporting a skull and crossbones and have yet to carry off any women! What kind of feaux pirate crap is this? It's a disgrace to the profession.

So maybe it's time to eliminate these clowns, not for the crime of ship hijacking, but for dishonoring an ancient and revered profession. When Captain Philips locked these guys out of the engine room and offered himself as a hostage, they had no clue of what to do with the ship and even had to make their escape in one of his lifeboats! Can anyone picture Blackbeard being at such a loss for figuring our how to pilot a ship he just captured? And when the lifeboat ran out of gas they drifted along until Jack Bauer shot them all in the head!

If Blackbeard was around today, he'd go after these people himself for conduct unbecoming of a pirate! And within a year, the Somali pirates would either be gone or behaving like proper pirates. But since that's not going to happen, maybe it's time to give our merchant sailors some training with cutlasses and cannons to repel boarders. This new breed of inept pirates won't know how to proceed and they'll be forced to go into another line of dishonest work, like maybe being bank executives, where at least they would fit right in and their glaring lack of seamanship would be no handicap at all.