Modern day "Q" ship

[frank2056]

Do you think I should do drop down sides like the German raiders, or drop down container boxes to make it a bit more modern?

Containers! You can fit most of a Phalanx CIWS in a container. Also, you can add a few Mk 38 /M242 Bushmaster chain guns all over the ship.

[proditor]

Containers it is then!   

The current plan is to have containers fore and aft, and 2 more port and starboard about midships.  Sides will be Phalanx, front/back will be 76mm Super-Rapids.

Along the sides and the deckhouse will be the pop up guns and possible hellfire racks.

Now I just have to wait for the model to...well...arrive.  Heh.

Depending on when that happens, this may get back-burnered until the new year as the missus and I are going to see family over Christmas.

[sandiego89]

Here is how phalanx CIWS scaled out on my scratch WHIF 1/700 Atlantic Conveyor. Plenty of room on top of a container stack.   

[dy031101]

Mind you, the ideal, easy Q-ship response is simply a few armed men: let the damn whaler come alongside, then lean over the railing with a Minimi and a handful of grenades.....

Question: how do those armed civilian ships coordinate with military patrols?  Or they don't and instead open up only when caught alone by the pirates because the military wouldn't appreciate seeing non-military boats being armed in the first place?

[Weaver]

I was assuming it would be done with the tacit co-operation of the military. Let's face it, the pirates arn't going to start an attack on a ship if there's a frigate or a helo within sight anyway, so the "security detail" will, by definition, be on their own when the fun starts.

You would need legal authority getting them on and off the ships with their weapons though. What I imagined was a scheme whereby ship owners hire their own protection squads, which come aboard from a tender at one end of "pirate alley" and depart on another one at the end of it, private jets being used to re-position the teams and their weapons with minimum hassle. This requires the co-operation of sea and airports at both ends, so the military/legal authorities would have a very effective sanction to use on any private team that crossed the line: they could simply stop them from operating at all.

[Rheged]

Question: how do those armed civilian ships coordinate with military patrols?  Or they don't and instead open up only when caught alone by the pirates because the military wouldn't appreciate seeing non-military boats being armed in the first place?

Is it still feasible for Her Majesty to issue "Letters of Marque and Reprisal"  and turn the armed merchantmen into privateers? It would keep them wearing white hats in the situation.   I'm sure that the bit in the 1860's Treaty of Paris that covers this could be suspended for the duration.
  If it worked for messers F Drake  and co......... Perfidious Albion and Family P L C strike again. 
   One could even  model Her Canadian Majesty Queen Elizabeth's  Private Vessel of War  Vancouver  or Her Australian Majesty  Queen Elizabeth's Private War Vessel  Newcastle. 

On a related topic, the new Orkney ferry "Pentalina " was built in the Phillipines and sailed by an Orcadian delivery crew to Gills Bay near Thurso . When the crew were told of the pirate threat, they were aghast.......their new high tech ferry didn't have a strong enough yard arm from which to hang pirates !!