[jester]

I was studying for my merchant marine papers a few years ago. And they had specialty training for crew members which allowed them a bonus. Like lifeboat something or other I forget. Another for life saver, another for rescue swimmer. Simply add a secondary or specailty billet of gunner as an additional duty with a small monthly bonus the same as they do for the other specialty additional duties, all voluntary but paid for by the company, or their merchant membership.

And the pecident does exist in WWI and WWII when they put weapons on the ships to combat submarines, provide air protection and from comerce raiding Q ships.

It can be done, it should be done and it can be done cost effectivly, the only real cost is the weapons mount, cheaply done, the weapons system a M2 .50 goes for about $5k per unit, add initial training of another 1 to 5 K per man, and then annual or biannual qualification less than $1k with 2 mounts per vessel, to give a decent amount of coverage the cost is less than 50k for the all gun crews and weapons systems for a year. That is alot less than what they spend on fuel bipassing the region.

As for "MERCENARYS" they can simply do what the cruise ships have started doing with passengers.

The put into port before they hit the zone, and bus the passengers to an airport then fly the passengers out of the hot zone, then bus them to the port where they will meet up with the ship as the ships sails on without passengers.

I would think doing this for a dozen men is alot cheaper than for a thousand or more civilians.

Hell, they could just have platoons of say 24 six men per ship.

A platoon in the North, a platoon in the South, six men per ship.

And they just switch one South bound team replaces a North bound team, when youy have to many men in one area without enough in the other, they are bused back and they start all over again.