17 thoughts on “Well, This Should Be Embarrassing”

  1. There’s a scifi book that has the Venezuelans attacking a floating offshore oil facility. They lose in that story too.

  2. In 47 years of driving, giving way to vehicles with greater kinetic energy has served me well. It works at sea, too.

    1. The rule is giving way to much cheaper vehicles, too.

      Warships of any size cost big bucks.

  3. I looked at some fairly similar warships built by the Spanish company that built Venezuela’s vessel, and I’d estimate its purchase price as somewhere between $150 million to $200 million dollars.
    Their shakedown/piracy operations are probably in the red now.

    They bought four of them, and four a a slightly larger class from the same company. Now they’re down to six, as a Venezuelan captain ran one of the larger ones aground during exercises and it’s still in the shop in Brazil (and has been for several years).

    Venezuela is of course screaming that the cruise ship was the aggressor, but I don’t think blaming an own-goal on an opposing player is a message that’s going to do anything to improve their reputation. “The enemies aggressive passenger ships are sinking our mighty fleet!”

    1. You don’t tug on superman’s cape
      You don’t spit into the wind
      You don’t pull the mask off that old lone ranger
      And you don’t ram a German ice breaker

      That “cruise ship” is not one of those mega floating hotels, rather, it for “eco tourism” of passengers who want to see arctic wildlife or some such thing.

      The other thing, don’t you think that someone would have learned from the US Navy that the smaller frigate-scale warships are pretty thin-skinned, maybe they are made lightweight for speed, and don’t come off well in collisions with commercial vessels.

      I mean, this would have been like PT-109 attempting to ram the Japanese destroyer?

    2. “The enemies aggressive passenger ships are sinking our mighty fleet!”

      Passenger-aggressive military tactics!

  4. What the heck was an Arctic cruise ship doing in the waters off of Venezuela, whose Northernmost Latitude is 10 degrees? Especially one cited by Venezuela as “…a purpose built polar expedition vessel of the highest ice class, rated 1A Super, designed to operate in difficult ice conditions.”

    The RGCS Resolute looks big, but it’s only 409 feet 5 inches long, with a gross tonnage of 8,445. The ANBV Guaicamacuto is only 262 feet long, with a displacement of 1,720 tons. It was like a canoe taking on a ski boat, and the canoe had to lose.

    But the question in my mind is: why was the Resolute there in the first place?

    1. I should add a little to the question. The people who originally ordered the ship ran into financial difficulties, and were unable to take delivery. While it was on layup in the shipyard, a number of parties expressed interest in her. One of them was Donald Trump.

      That was back in 1991. And it wasn’t just his “people” who expressed an interest. He personally went and viewed the ship. https://ls24.fi/uutiset/donald-trump-kavi-raumalla-laivakaupoilla-nayttelijavaimo-naytti-poseeraamisen-mallia (Use Google translate to get it in English).

      I wonder if there isn’t some connection. We’re all good at conspiracy theories, here… Let’s see what we can conjur.

    3. The ships position is easily explained by a marketing researcher.

      “Everybody who wants to spend two weeks looking at an arctic wasteland raise their hand. Okay. Now, everybody who wants to spend two weeks in a tropical island paradise raise their hand.”

  5. Reminds me of one of Ronald Regan’s statements at a hippie protest when he was governor of California. A protestor with a ‘make love not war’ t-shirt walked past and Regan said to an aide, “He looks like he can’t do either one.” Seems fitting here.

    1. AKA the USS Phoenix, a Brooklyn (!) class cruiser, built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation of – wait for it – Camden, New Jersey, and launched on 13 March 1938 from somewhere, then commissioned 3 October 1938 in the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

      She was at Pearl in 1941, and survived the attack to carry on a long and distinguished service throughout the war.

      She was decommissioned on 3 July 1946, and remained at Philadelphia until sold to Argentina on 9 April 1951. She was commissioned in the Argentine Navy as Diecisiete de Octubre (C-4) on 17 October 1951, then renamed ARA General Belgrano in 1956.

      Belgrano was sunk during the Falklands (or, as Bobby Bittman put it, “Facklands”) War on 2 May 1982 by the British attack submarine HMS Conqueror, with the loss of 323 lives.

      You know, I actually understand why “they don’t make ’em” like that any more.

    1. Sarah Hoyt is claiming it as a Portuguese naval victory (the first in several centuries), since the cruise ship was Portuguese-flagged.

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