Stowe company builds “boat traps” to control pirates

Print More
MP3

(Host) A small Stowe company has begun to make a new product that it says could help control the growing threat of piracy on the high seas.

VPR’s Ross Sneyd has more.

(Sneyd) Moscow Mills Manufacturing Services operates from the site of an old grist mill that dates to the 1820s.

But its products are the stuff of science fiction.

The company has teamed up with another engineering firm from Massachusetts to make “boat traps.” Those are high-tech nets that can stop threatening boats in their tracks.

Moscow Mills CEO and founder Anderson Leveille says the technology might have stopped the pirates who captured Captain Richard Phillips of Underhill.

(Leveille) “It’s very prescient given current circumstances. It provides an excellent solution for the problems these folks are having all over the place, whether it’s in ports, whether it’s on ships being pirated by the folks off Somalia. … The fantastic thing about it is it’s a less-than-lethal or nonlethal technology. You have the opportunity to stop them before using lethal force.”

(Sneyd) The idea behind boat traps is simple. The Navy, Air Force or even a merchant ship can drop one of the devices in the water if threatened.

Small charges detonate and a net is spread across the water. The net fouls the propellers and steering of an approaching pirate boat and keeps it safely away from a merchant ship or a warship.

Moscow Mills has begun to manufacture the devices and has gotten orders for more. Leveille says 14 people work at the company now, but that’s likely to grow as more orders come in.

For VPR News, I’m Ross Sneyd.

Comments are closed.