Say the word “pirate” and you and I see a violent, peg-legged sea dog with gunpowder smouldering in his beard.

Shipowners see businessmen, and rightly so: only three hostages have been killed so far in the recent attacks (all the deaths were accidents), while the pirates have made tens of millions of pounds in profit.

The last thing that shipowners want to do is to change a monetary relationship into a gunfight. Why? It’s bad for business, driving the all-important insurance rates through the roof.

Individual ships can deploy preventive measures such as proper lighting, round-the-clock watchmen with radar and thermal video equipment, fire hoses, physical barriers, acoustic weapons, radar, video cameras, electric fencing and high-intensity light beams.

Armed guards, however, are a last resort. They are expensive, some flag states don’t allow them, and many ports won’t admit ships with weapons on board, forcing the guns to be dumped overboard on arrival.

And the consequences of unleashing a cut-price, untrained army on to the decks of the world’s merchant navy sends shivers down the keel of the maritime world.

The only way to stop piracy off Somalia is to sort out what is happening on the land.

Africa’s longest – and most anarchic – coastline is a perfect breeding ground for pirates, especially when fertilised by collusion from the highest levels of government.

Unless shipowners are able to succeed where a generation of United Nations negotiators have failed, the only certain way to avoid Somalia’s pirates is to avoid Somalia entirely.

However, shipping has always been about managing risk, and since it’s still only one ship in 600 on the route that gets taken and then retrieved with the payment of a hefty ransom, many still prefer to roll the dice.

To stop insurance rates going through the roof, shipowners need to band together to convince governments to commit resources to improving the security of this maritime corridor.

At the moment the coalition navies are only moonlighting as an antipirate force – their main occupation is counterterrorism and busting gun runners.

The navies themselves also need to work together to establish rules of engagement. At the moment each is ruled by their own nation’s criminal law. Last week the Royal Navy got a lucky break: the pirates fired first, allowing the British to take action.

It is unlikely that the pirates will make that mistake again: business as usual is suiting them just fine.

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