Venezuela’s navy battles a cruise ship, and loses
The sailors had guns, but the unarmed pleasure boat had a thick hull
IT WAS, ON the face of it, a mismatched contest. The ANBV Naiguatá, a Venezuelan patrol vessel, was armed with a 76mm naval gun, a German-built anti-aircraft system that sprays a cloud of tungsten bullets and a pair of deck-mounted machine guns, among other weaponry. The RCGS Resolute, a Portuguese-flagged cruise ship with an 80-seat theatre, had the top speed of an oil tanker. But in the early hours of March 30th it was Venezuela’s Bolivarian navy whose ship ended up on the seabed—in the first decisive naval skirmish in the Caribbean for 75 years.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Bolivarian farce”
From the April 11th 2020 edition
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