Cheap parachutes, anyone?

LAST week, I shot several pirates with an M4 carbine. Oh alright, no I didn't. What I actually did was fire a dummy weapon at a screen but it felt surprisingly realistic. I was not, of course, on the deck of a merchant ship in the Indian Ocean. I was in the basement of an office somewhere in southern England.

Graeme Brooks, CEO of specialist security company Dryad Maritime, was putting me through a demonstration aimed at showing how difficult it is being an armed guard on a merchant ship. Deciding if and when to fire is terrifyingly hard.

On the screen, in a succession of scenarios, a speedboat approached at different angles, with its occupants adopting varying postures, with and without weapons on show. In some cases, a weapon was pointed and fired at a very late stage. In other cases, there was actually no threat from the small craft.