Posted on 11/21/2008 9:31:12 AM PST by nickcarraway
A Yorkshire mariner who took on a gang of pirates and lived to tell the tale tells Sarah Freeman how theft on the high seas was allowed to become big business. John Bailey is not a natural diplomat.
As careful negotiations were continuing to secure the safe release of the crew of the hijacked Sirius Star, the Hornsea mariner's own suggestion for dealing with the growing problem of piracy is rather more blunt.
"You don't stop pirates by talking to them," he says with the kind of pragmatism which comes after decades at sea. "You stop them by aiming guns at them."
Still he should know. Seven years ago, Bailey was marine supervisor on board an elderly tanker in waters near Sierra Leone when he was woken in the early hours by the sound of machine guns being cocked outside his cabin door.
Less experienced seamen might have pulled the covers over their head and prayed for divine intervention, but Bailey, then 52, instinctively grabbed the gun beside his bed and jumped into action. He didn't even bother getting dressed.
The 10-strong pirate gang had already overpowered one officer, but confronted by the naked Yorkshireman armed with a pump-action shotgun, their plans to make off with the ship's cargo of cash began to unravel.
"While we were taken by surprise, we always knew there was a possibility of a pirate attack," says the 60-year-old veteran of African waters. "The tanker was an off-shore fuel station for fishing boats so we had a lot of money on board, but the Russian crew were pretty lax when it came to security.
"When I woke up, the pirates were already trying to force their way into the captain's cabin and I came face to face with one of them, who tried to fire his Kalashnikov. Thankfully, it jammed and it gave me a few seconds to retaliate. As I fired my own gun, he tried to escape leaving behind a trail of blood.
"It was very dark, but we could see the gang's boat near to our ship. We couldn't see anyone on it, but I fired two magazines in its direction and it drifted off into the dark. It's something I'll never forget, but it didn't leave me feeling particularly traumatised."
While Bailey's encounter with pirates seems like a particularly dramatic boy's own adventure, increasing numbers of ships are being targeted by armed gangs in search of easy pickings.
So far this year, nine crew members have been killed in pirate attacks, the same number are missing, presumed dead, and 581 have been taken hostage. With a third of all ambushes taking place in the sea near Somalia, the African coast has become a piracy hotspot and the International Maritime Bureau now estimate that more than 1,200 Somalis and at least six major groups are involved.
It is a lucrative business. The ransom paid to gangs has risen from $10,000 to $1m in recent years and the higher stakes have brought ever more audacious attacks.
"Piracy may have now come to the public's attention now, but it's always been a problem in that part of the world," says Bailey. "It started small-scale, but because ship owners are reluctant to take direct action it has escalated. Companies have to abide by so many health and safety regulations and much of the shipping industry now views on- board protection teams as too much of a potential risk.
"The general advice from the coastguard is always not to antagonise pirates. Gangs know that nine times out of 10 their demands will be met and there is absolutely no deterrent. Until piracy stops being easy money, they will continue to take ship after ship."
Currently, 10 other vessels and 250 crew members are thought to be in the hands of pirates and this week an Indian navy warship destroyed a suspect boat after it came under fire in the Gulf of Aden. In wake of an increasing number of incidents, some shipping owners have installed electrified fencing and satellite tracking, but neither would have provided adequate defence against the gang, armed with an anti-tank rocket launcher and grenades, who attacked the Sirius Star.
The hijack of the tanker, carrying some £67m of oil, some 420 nautical miles from the shore was also a departure from the norm. Piracy has tended to be concentrated nearer to the coastlines, but with the increasingly well armed, well-funded and well-organised operations casting their nets ever wider, detection is proving difficult.
"A few years ago, if you were anchored near to a coast you knew the situation was potentially dodgy," says Bailey. "But now ships are being targeted when they are miles away at sea. Ship owners are paying thousands of pounds to these criminals, because they think there's no other option. They are prepared to write off ransom demands against the value of the cargo, but it's just crazy.
"Patrols can only do so much, but the truth is it's easy to defend a ship against robbers. It would cost virtually nothing to have a protection team on board and if these gangs thought they might end up on the wrong end of two or three ex-Army guys they might actually think twice about doing it.
"Historically, merchant ships were always armed, but now they don't have the facilities to defend themselves and the gangs are winning. These pirates aren't straight out of a children's book, they are nasty pieces of work."
Bailey's run-in with pirates, who it later emerged were ex-rebel soldiers from Sierra Leone, wasn't the first or last time he would face dangers at sea. Three years earlier, when a rebellion of renegade soldiers attempted to topple the government of Guinea Bissau, near Senegal, he took his cargo ship to rescue the United States Ambassador and her staff from the former Portuguese colony.
More recently he has been working in fishing protection, tracking down the boats responsible for over-fishing in the West African seas.
"It's a massive problem," he says. "They're wiping out entire stocks of tuna and small fish and our job is to identify illegal operations and arrest them. Of course they don't like being told what to do, but we are there to do a job."
Bailey is currently on terra firma, enjoying a break at his Hornsea home, but he plans to be back on the water after Christmas.
"At some point I'll slow down," he says, acknowledging his 60th birthday just a few months away. "But just not yet.
TOLL OF THE MODERN PIRATES
Warships from at least nine countries are patrolling the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden on the lookout for pirates, but many believe their presence has only shifted the problem further out to sea.
Piracy is estimated to have cost the world an estimated $60m-$70m this year alone.
It has become a particular problem in Somalia where after 17 years of non-stop conflict, almost half the population needs food aid.
Following the capture of the Sirius Star, a Hong Kong cargo ship carrying 36,000 tonnes of wheat bound for Iran also fell victim to pirates.
In April, a Japanese oil tanker was hit by rocket-propelled grenades and Iranian carrier was chased for 30 minutes by a machine-gun wielding gang in a speed boat.
Why doesn’t every ship sailing those waters have a couple of .50 cal’s mounter fore and aft?
The piracy case in Somalia is a perfect example of victim disarmament at sea. Most merchant ships are forbidden by their countries’ laws from having weapons on board (a ban which is enforced by rigorous inspections), which leaves a 20.000tn ship worth hundreds of million of dollars vulnerable to a pirate dinghy with a crew of five armed with AKs and RPGs worth a few hundred bucks. So do we allow owners to spend a few thousand dollars on weapons and private security on board? God forbid! No, much better to send a carrier group, or just nuke the high seas.
At present the war navies of India, Russia, Britain, the US, Malasya and a NATO taskforce are in the Gulf of Aden playing cat-and-mouse with a few Somali pirates. An EU fleet is on its way.
Better yet.....why doesn’t our Navy sink these guys? As it stands now, they have to call back to the states and get permission from a JAG officer. Navy commanders are afraid of loosing their commissions. When I was in the Navy, I know my commander would have blown them out of the water. But then again, he was man, not afraid of his own shadow.
Many ports worldwide won’t allow entry to armed ships.
Regulation ought to require adequate ship arms and training to repel boarders,but the modern corporate wusses are afraid of crewmen gone amok.Just as nearly all businesses are mandated by OSHA to prohibit weapons for a "safe" workplace,that is really safe only for the attackers.
I'm certain they will advise you.
Prolly something about being too busy singing Kumbya, (also spelled Kum Ba Yah) and mumbling something like ... " can't we all get along?"
--I am under the impression that anytime any vessel (small or large) sails into any territorial waters, it commences to be under that entity's firearms regulations--I.E., possession generally forbidden--
A Cruise Ship will get highjacked before the New Year.
We need lots more people like this guy, along with Blackwater types running security and Mk 19 automatic grenade launchers on the bridge rails...
We had the same problem in the Straits of Malacca during Vietnam. Believe me, it wasn’t a problem for long and the sharks got a tasty dinner.
Of all the Presidents of the past 30 or so years, I would guess that Reagan would have taken the least shit off of “pirates” and would have given them the Qadaffi Treatment.
Many ports worldwide won’t allow entry to armed ships.
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Armed ships don’t kill people, Pirates kill people.
Wow, I've fired thousands of rounds through my Kalashnikov, never cleaned it except for an occasional patch down the barrel, and the thing has NEVER jammed.
FYI Ping !
I suspect that a lot of these "jobs" are having inside help, either on board the ships or back at their corp. offices. Still, pay some of our out of service special ops guys and give them good weapons and radar and other detection equipment. It has to be much less cost than paying these ransoms and terrorizing innocent crew members.
Drop snakes on ‘em. Pirates hate snakes.
That would work to some extent, but the real solution would simply be an on call air patrol squadron at the ready ( A10s would do)in on call teams of 2 out of Djibouti,and Blackwater teams of 6 men armed with shoulder fired anti-tank weapons, the 50's and light arms such as the H&K suite of weapons.
Loyds of London is in the hands of bleeding liberal A$$ hats and ARABS, or this would already be happening.
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