The facts: on May 9, a Taiwanese fishing boat, the Kuang Ta Hsing no. 28, was fired on by a Filipino coast guard vessel in disputed waters southeast of Taiwan, killing Hung Shih-cheng, a 65-year-old Taiwanese fisherman.
The British government had declared a war zone around the Falklands, allowing its ships to fire on Argentine vessels that entered the restricted area.
In 1996, after a fire on another vessel owned by the company killed one person and caused $3 million in damage, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the company had not made proper fire-safety precautions.
The report said that the American forces fired on the vessel and injured two crewmen; there were no further details.
But apparently, shots were fired on the vessel Golden Eye after it entered Sealand's extended exclusion zone in 1990.
The Danish ship opened fire on the vessel after it ignored both calls to stop and warning shots, the navy said.
A Coast Guard cutter began firing on the vessel, known as Ryou-Un Maru, around 1 p.m. local time using a 25-millimeter cannon with "highly explosive ammunition," said Lt. Veronica Colbath, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.
The Danish company that operates the ship, the Maersk Line, said its onboard guards repelled an attack from multiple pirate skiffs after the attackers opened fire on the vessel, the Maersk Texas.
They cited the federal statute under which Ms. Mauskopf's office has been weighing charges, a maritime law used nearly 100 years ago to convict the captain of the General Slocum after more than 1,000 people died in a fire on that vessel, an excursion steamer, in the East River in June 1904.
See articleVietnam accused China of firing on one of its fishing vessels in waters near the Chinese-occupied Paracel islands, over which China and Vietnam fought in 1974.
