At the age of 26, Somers commanded the "fire ship," Intrepid- a maritime Trojan Horse rigged to explode near a flotilla of enemy ships.
Questions have also been raised about the violation of international maritime law by Israel, after reports that the flotilla was around 80 miles from Gaza's coast when Israeli commandos boarded.
The flotilla's mission was to monitor the maritime traffic in the region, safeguard the sea lanes and, if necessary, board and capture terrorists -- a mission the United States Central Command calls "leadership interdiction".
Some cases are obvious, such as when the organizers of a 2010 flotilla that aimed to breach Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza subsequently denied the Holocaust and claimed that Israel was behind the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
"According to reports from sea, on board the flotilla that was seeking to break the maritime closure on the Gaza Strip, IDF forces apprehended two violent activists holding pistols.
I doubt the organisers will show the brilliance of the flotilla's masterminds, who knew a display of maritime passion would surpass flashy circus tricks.
This week, China appeared to increase the pressure on Japan by sending a flotilla of navy ships near the islands, instead of the maritime surveillance ships it sent before.
Additional flotillas must have been stationed at the other great maritime and commercial centres of the Empire: at Alexandria, providing the escort to the annual grain fleet to Constantinople, and at Carthage, controlling the western Mediterranean.
Those on board the MV Marianne, part of Freedom Flotilla III — which departed from Greece on Saturday to protest and break through the maritime blockade near the Gaza Strip — included politicians, such as a former president of Tunisia, as well as activists and journalists from around the world.
Additionally, unless a political solution is found to the 2010 Gaza-Flotilla, the Greek-Israeli military partnership could easily escalate into regional instability as maritime tensions in the eastern Mediterranean with Turkey could become inevitable.
Recently, seemingly compassionate and well meaning individuals and organizations (well, some of them at least) loaded a flotilla of ships bound for Gaza with humanitarian aid for the Palestinians under an Israeli maritime blockade.
