Somali Pirates
Extracted from The Triton,a magazine for Yachtsmen and Mariners,with thanks."
In the hours and days after Somali pirates hijacked a 58-foot yacht off the coast of Oman and subsequently killed the four Americans aboard on Feb. 22, the yachting community struggled to make sense of news reports, government statements and military action.
“I see no reason for pirates to kill four people with a warship staring down their necks,” said Capt. Mike Dailey, who has traversed the region three times in the past year. “It just makes no sense.”
Indeed, the immediately released details present an almost unbelievable situation.
Nineteen pirates were involved in the hijacking, most of who were on the yacht when the shooting began. Four U.S. Navy warships were involved in the response force – an aircraft carrier, a guided-missile cruiser and two guided-missile destroyers. Gunfire, believed to have been a rocket-propelled grenade fired from the yacht toward one of the Navy ships, began while officials from the FBI were in negotiations with two pirates aboard the Navy ship. The remains of two pirates were found on the yacht when Navy forces boarded, killing two others and detaining 13 others.
“What possible use was an aircraft carrier?” Dailey asked. “How do you get 19 pirates on board? With the four Americans, that’s 23 people on a 50-foot boat. Who decided to divert Navy assets in aid of a 50-foot sailboat and four people?”
Details so far
According to government statements, news reports, and involved parties, S/Y Quest had been in the Blue Water Round the World Cruising Rally from Phuket, Thailand, to Mumbai, India. After arriving in Mumbai, “The skipper then made a decision to leave the Rally in Mumbai on 15 February and sail a route independent of the Rally to Salalah, [Oman],” rally organizer Peter Seymour told Sail-World.com.
According to that Web site, the owners, Scott and Jean Adams, requested an escort by the Navies patrolling the area but were denied. The yacht was hijacked about 280nm off Oman and was being taken to the northern tip of Somalia when U.S. military forces responded.
Two pirates boarded the Navy ship Feb. 21 to negotiate the crew’s release with FBI officials, according to news reports and U.S. government statements. During these negotiations, at about 1 a.m., gunfire could be heard on board the Quest, U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Mark Fox told reporters.
U.S. forces then approached and boarded the Quest, getting into a skirmish with pirates aboard. All four of the crew – the Adamses of Marina del Rey, Calif., and Phyllis Mackay and Bob Riggle of Seattle – had been shot by their captors, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. Efforts to revive them were unsuccessful.
Two pirates were killed in the skirmish and 13 were captured and detained, CNN reported.
“In total, it is believed 19 pirates were involved in the hijacking” of the vessel, Central Command said.
No details of the negotiations or whether a ransom had been offered were available.U.S. forces had been monitoring the Quest since it was hijacked Feb. 18. U.S. Central Command said four U.S. Navy warships were involved in the response force.
More yachts attacked
The attack on the S/Y Quest is the latest in a number of attacks on yachts. According to the BBC:
1. South African couple Bruno Pelizzari and Deborah Calitz are still being held in Somalia, four months after their vessel, the S/Y Choizil, was hijacked.
2. Paul and Rachel Chandler were held for nearly 400 days after their yacht was hijacked near the Seychelles in October 2009.
3. French yacht owner Florent Lemacon was killed in April 2009 when French commandos tried to liberate him and four other people from their hijacked yacht, the Tanit, off Somalia. Somalia has had no functioning central government since 1991, allowing piracy to flourish off its coast.
In addition, the German-owned transport ship Beluga Nomination was carrying eight yachts on deck when it was hijacked en route to the Seychelles on Jan. 22. A German newscast of the incident shows photos of the ship and its yacht cargo. At least one is a megayacht. The yachts have since been off-loaded and are believed to remain in the hands of pirates, who may use them for additional attacks.
The international security flotilla’s response to that incident is another cause for question. After reporting their mayday, the crew of 12 locked themselves in the citadel, the secure room onboard where they can be safe and disable the ship. After three days, pirates were able to enter the room and take control of the ship. It remains in pirate hands.
“And we divert four warships from their primary mission of protecting the world’s merchant fleet for a 50-foot sailboat and four Americans?” Dailey asked. “How arrogant can we be? Do you think the Germans got that kind of response? The Brits didn’t.”
The Chandlers, a British couple kidnapped last year from their yacht, the Lynn Rival, were taken ashore in Somalia. British authorities negotiated their release after more than a year for about $1 million, it was reported.
In April 2009, pirates seized the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama, leading to a standoff in the Indian Ocean. U.S. forces moved to rescue American Capt. Richard Phillips after seeing a pirate aiming a weapon at his back, officials said at the time. Navy sharpshooters killed three pirates; one was arrested. The Somali man arrested was convicted of acts related to high-seas piracy, and a federal court in New York sentenced him last week to more than 30 years in prison.
As of Feb. 15, pirates were holding 33 vessels and 712 hostages, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).
Piracy hits record
Despite having been prevalent for centuries, piracy in the region reached record numbers in 2010, the fourth straight year of increases. According to the IMB, which tracks such attacks, pirates took a record number of hostages, 1,181, and killed eight mariners.
Somali pirates accounted for 49 of the 53 ships hijacked last year and 1,106 of the kidnappings. A total of 445 attacks on ships were logged by the IMB’s piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur, a 10 percent increase over 2009 and the highest figure since the previous peak in 2003.
“These figures for the number of hostages and vessels taken are the highest we have ever seen,” said Capt. Pottengal Mukundan, director of the Malaysia-based Piracy Reporting Centre, which has monitored piracy worldwide since 1991. “As a percentage of global incidents, piracy on the high seas has increased dramatically over armed robbery in territorial waters. On the high seas off Somalia, heavily armed pirates are overpowering ocean-going fishing or merchant vessels to use as a base for further attacks. They capture the crew and force them to sail to within attacking distance of other unsuspecting vessels.”
More than 90 percent of ship seizures occurred off the coast of Somalia. The number of attacks in the Gulf of Aden has dropped sharply due to an international naval presence there, the IMB reported.
“I’ve seen them [pirates] moving farther south, farther east all the way to the Maldives and the Mozambique Channel,” Dailey said.
The problem is area. The entire United States east of the Mississippi River could fit into the Somali basin, Vice Admiral Fox said. Thirty-four warships patrol the region under 15 flags and work well together, he said, but “there’s a lot of places where we are not.”
A few solutions
About 800 miles to the south and east of Somalia, travelers to the Seychelles often pass through the same areas as S/Y Quest. As a yacht management company supporting visiting megayachts to the region, Alastair Maiden of Seal Superyachts Seychelles monitors piracy news.
He recommends vessels take security companies with them when transiting the Indian Ocean, Gulf of Aden and Red Sea areas.
“There are options of armed escorts,” he said. “They have small patrol boats in the area. They have six crew on each vessel and stay with the traveling yacht. Sometimes if smaller or private vessels are cruising together, they can organize a convoy and possibly afford it together.”
Most often, however, boats will use onboard security, he said. As to why S/Y Quest didn’t have security onboard, Maiden thought it might be for financial reasons.
“We had a guy in the marina on a smaller yacht going to the Maldives and, basically on the advice of the port authorities, he had the boat wintered and cancelled the trip,” Maiden said. “That size and speed cannot be protected and typically they don’t have the funds to do so.
“Anything over, say, 50m, there is a risk [of piracy], but if they take precautions and have armed security, I would say it is OK,” Maiden said. “But they must take all precautions, the razor wire, trail lines, all of it.”
Not even that will prevent an attempted attack.
“How do you go in the middle of the ocean and find a 50-foot sailboat?” Dailey asked. “These attacks are well orchestrated and well organized. They knew where they were going, and they got that information from somebody. That’s why I run dark, no AIS. When the AIS is on, I run confusing information before I leave. And I don’t tell the agents in Egypt where I’m going.”
The Marshall Islands shipping registry issued an advisory soon after the killings to advise its yacht and commercial clients to cease transiting the area.
Jon and Sue Hacking, cruisers aboard the 45-foot catamaran Ocelot who have contributed stories about their travels to The Triton since 2004, have spent the past year cruising in the Indian Ocean.
“We have thought about the problem [of piracy] quite a bit, of course, being here in the Indian Ocean,” they wrote in an e-mail to friends the day the Adamses were reported killed. “As we see it, the long-term solution probably involves lots of aid to Somalia as well as helping them establish a working government. But the Somali warlords who currently hold the power are unlikely to relinquish it anytime soon, so we also need a shorter-term solution.
“Shipping companies have no option - they must pay the ransoms - so the solution has to be military,” they wrote. “We don’t like to complain without proposing solutions, so here are a couple of proposals we’ve come up with:
“1. Blockade Somalia. The coastline is 1,600nm if you include Puntland and Somaliland along the north coast. Station ships 50-100nm off the coast (so out of Somalia’s territorial waters), search all ships coming out of Somalia and take away any weapons. No weapons, no piracy.
“The Israel’s have been doing this for years on their own coast, and Australia patrols a much longer coastline. Given Somalia’s sad economic state, not many boats are going to or from Somalia so there shouldn’t be many boats to search.
“If necessary, designate entry and exit paths and let it be known that any boat using different lanes will be attacked. This solution also prevents others from fishing the Somali coast, which has been one of their complaints.
“2. Set up stations in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea where ships could stop to take on about four Marines. The Marines would need to be allowed to fire on pirates, or at least to return fire. The Marines would ride on and protect the ship for 2-3 days as they transit the pirate areas and then get off to catch another ship going the other way.
“Both the ships and the Marines would love it. About 300 ships/day go through that area. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t help us (unless more stations were setup) and also wouldn’t stop the attempts at piracy (the ransoms are just too great)."
Like the Hackings, the Adamses were long-term cruisers who would rather be aboard their boat than just about anywhere else. Shipping their beloved Quest on a cargo ship to the Mediterranean was not an option for them. Christian missionaries seven years into a round-the-world cruise, they opted instead in favor of sailing a new passage, even without an escort.
“They know the risks,” said Nancy Birnbaum, a freelance journalist and former editor of the Seven Seas Cruising Association newsletter. “Certainly, there are other options,” she said. “Shipping your boat is obviously safer, and it gets your boat where you want it.
“As a cruiser, though, I know it’s just part of it,” she said. “This type of trip is typical of long-term cruisers; that’s just what they do.”