UO Second Age

I was out mining on a boat and was killed by several persons on other boats. After being completely boxed in with boats, one boat, immediately adjacent to me, dropped their plank, stood on it, and proceeded to loot the vast majority of the ore. I had stacked most of the ore in a straight line in the center of the boat from stem to stern, 6 stacks of 400+ ore and 1 stack of 2000+ ore. I also had several smaller stacks of ore scattered around the edges of the boat. They were never able to come onto my boat and my key was in the bank. After looting all the ore on the edges of the boat and all but 2 of each of the inner stacks they left. However these bastards bemoaned the fact that they couldn't steal ALL the ore, thats what I call greedy. For some reason they were not able to target the last 2 ores in each of the center piles. My question is: Is this an exploit? Is a person able to steal the contents of the deck of a ship without ever getting on it?

Not an exploit, and only the 2 tiles where the ore was not stolen from (tile in front and tile behind the mast) are the only 2 "safe" places to keep your stuff.

I had the big stack of 2000 against the mast, and all they left there was 2 pieces. Like I said in my initial post, they took all the ore in the center of the boat, including that on both sides of the mast, except for 2 pieces in each stack.

So, if the two tiles are supposed to be the only safe spots on the deck of a ship, and someone IS able to take items from those spots as I described above, is that an exploit?

To clarify, there is only *ONE* spot that's safe, the tile immediately behind the mast on a *LARGE* boat.

Keep your planks locked, your key in your hold, and your loot stacked behind the mast and you'll be fine. Anything smaller than a large boat and there is no safe spot on the deck (not necessarily an issue when mib/tmap hunting, just put them all in the hold).