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Rapid Transit

The rescue of Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama could not have been more dramatic. After days of tension, three U.S. Navy SEAL snipers, using night-vision goggles, on a ship tossing about in rough waters, each took one shot, “picking off” three Somali pirates, one of whom was behind a window, in a boat 100 feet away, in a split second.3 The rescue was notable, but the hijacking and hostage taking were typical: The European Union Naval Forces have reported that thousands of hostages have been taken over the years, with hundreds held at any given time.4 You might ask why ships keep plying the Somali coast or, more generally, the Gulf of Aden. The answer is simple: Although money may be lost in hijacked cargo and ransom payments, more money would be lost by taking a longer route.

A trip through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is inevitable when traversing the Suez Canal. And the Suez Canal is the shortcut between parts of Asia and the Indian subcontinent and the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic for ships headed to or from Europe or even the East Coast of North America. The only currently viable alternative is to round the Cape of Good Hope and all of Africa, which adds thousands of miles and several days to the voyage: Days in which extra fuel is used, days in which crews must be paid, days in which produce can rot, days in which inventory holding costs will be incurred.

Time is money; thus, delay is costly. Yet exploiting a shortest path can be associated ...