The planet’s shipping fleet should be protected from deadly pirates by arming senior crew members, or not — depending on who was speaking Thursday to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Maersk Alabama Capt. Richard Phillips or his boss, Maersk Inc. Chairman John P. Clancey.

“It would be my personal preference that a limited number of crew aboard the vessel have access to effective weaponry,” Phillips told the panel, his wife and a crew member seated behind him.

But doing that could expose sailors to a tactical escalation in violence — and, Clancey said later, the corporation to liability.

“Arming merchant sailors may result in the acquisition of ever more lethal weapons and tactics by the pirates, a race that merchant sailors cannot win,” Maersk Inc. Chairman John P. Clancey said in his prepared remarks.

The captain and corporate chief — shoulder-to-shoulder yet somewhat at odds — illustrated the knotty problem Congress, the shipping industry and foreign governments face as they consider how to crack down on a worrying spike in piracy and its threat to billions of dollars in cargo, military equipment and humanitarian aid.