Hollywood has for many years glamourised pirates. In days of old, swashbuckling heroes such as Burt Lancaster and Errol Flynn romantically plied the trade on screen and nowadays Johnny Depp sets hearts aflutter with his dashing buccaneering.
However, for the shipping industry - and now increasingly also cruise liners - piracy has become an unexpected 21st century headache.
The recent attack by pirates on the MSC Melody, one of the Italian vessels that Starlight Cruises brings to our waters every summer, has highlighted this new threat to a cruise industry already hard hit by the global economic slump and swine flu's threat to overseas travel.
With many South Africans on board the Melody the piracy threat has only now hit the headlines in our country.
It's understandable: hijacking even an enormous supertanker and holding just 20-odd crew members to ransom is never going to be as big news as hijacking a Boeing 747 with hundreds of civilians on board.
But what has made piracy a new issue for South Africans planning a luxury cruise is the fact that the Melody was attacked relatively close to home.
The vessel was apparently about 300km north of the Seychelles when the tiny skiff with a handful of pirates on board opened machine gun fire on the Melody.
Now this is news that will not be welcomed by operators of summer cruises from Durban to the Indian Ocean Islands. Some paranoid travellers might just think that if piracy is now fashionable in the Seychelles, will Mauritius and Reunion - even Mozambican islands - be next? Freight companies and oil tankers are already beginning to use the sea route around the Cape instead of the Horn of Africa, but for cruise liners there is nothing to match the allure of the Indian Ocean islands along the west coast of southern Africa.
However, MSC has already announced that its SA-Italy cruises that start and end its summer schedules from Durban, will in future sail along Africa's west coast, calling at Morocco, Senegal and Namibia.
Diverting cruises along the west coast of Africa would mean increased revenue for Namibian and South African ports, but there is the little matter of increasing piracy off the coast of Nigeria.
Although the Somalian pirates launch their attacks from almost ridiculous little skiffs and rubber dinghies these small boats are fast and piracy is also becoming a high-tech industry.
Satellite navigation systems are increasingly being employed and the pirates' skiffs sail from larger "mother ships" to extend their operating range.
Piracy is indeed big business in Somalia. It is estimated that around R500 million was collected in ransom last year, with about one ship being hijacked every week.
At any given time in 2008, as many as 200 people were being held to ransom.
The increasing number of piracy incidents is likely to result in substantially higher insurance tariffs for cruise companies and could perhaps ultimately also increase passenger fares.
No wonder cruise line owners are stepping up what has so far been behind-the-scenes security.
Apart from combat-ready armed security guards on board, some vessels are now equipped with Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD), an ear-splitting sonic device which the Seabourn Spirit, for example, used to repel pirates off the Somalian coast.
The LRAD is a scary device that can permanently damage the hearing of targets with decibels far higher than the human threshold of pain.
For readers who by now might be a little hesitant to book their next cruise, there are plenty of positives to consider.
In the first instance, experts say pirates are unlikely to really concentrate on cruise liners, mainly because it is much more difficult to control and hold to ransom hundreds of passengers than a sparsely populated supertanker.
What's more, tankers could be filled to the brim with lucrative oil loads.
Apart from the Horn of Africa and Gulf of Aden, maritime sources say areas where piracy has become a problem include the Malacca Straits, Red Sea, Nigeria, Guyana, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, South China Sea, Ecuador and Cuba, as well as the north-east coast of South America. The safest areas, they say, are where the US Coast Guard seems to have squashed piracy: Hawaii, Alaska and the Caribbean.
One would think the Mediterranean, UK, and Indian Ocean Islands cruises are also still relatively safe for now, hoping the Seychelles attack on the Melody was an isolated case. The government of Seychelles will not allow piracy to harm its vital tourism industry.
At the end of the day, it's a strange world we sail in. Let's hope the evening weather forecast left on cabin bunks will never say: "Cloudy and warm tomorrow, with a strong likelihood of pirates from the east"