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Bloodthirsty and beyond the law: rise of the gun-toting pirates terrorising the seas The Sunday Telegraph, May 25, 2008 Gethin Chamberlain THEY MIGHT not dress like characters in Pirates of the Caribbean, but the buccaneers of the 21st century are just as bloodthirsty. Mariners are being warned of a growing threat from pirates around the world after attacks on shipping rose by 20 per cent over the past year. Gone are the cannons and cutlasses of old, however. Instead, modern-day pirates are equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles. Latest figures from the International Maritime Bureau, which collates reports of piracy, show the first rise in attacks since their previous peak in the mid-1990s. In one particularly savage incident in the Philippines in March, pirates shot dead the captain of a passenger boat and two of his crew before tying them to their anchor and tossing it overboard. Then they shot the two remaining crew members and escaped in a motor boat. The sharp rise in pirate attacks is blamed in large part on the collapse of law and order in Somalia and political unrest in Nigeria. The seas off the two African countries are now regarded as some of the most dangerous in the world. Cyrus Mody, the IMB's manager, said the reality of piracy was far removed from the image portrayed in films. "People have a romantic illusion about pirates, but there is nothing romantic when they stand in front of you with a gun to your head,'' he said. The IMB recorded 49 attacks in the first quarter of this year, up from 41 in the same period last year. The massacre in the Philippines was the most serious, but there were many other incidents in which ships were attacked by gangs of heavily armed men. In January, five gunmen boarded a French yacht off Venezuela, shot one of the crew and demanded all their property. The same month, four armed men used grappling hooks to try to board a bulk carrier off the Nigerian coast. The IMB's records are a litany of brutality. Last year, pirates who attacked a Danish tanker off the coast of Nigeria tied up the bosun and threatened to cut off his ears unless he told them the code for locks on the cargo control room. In another attack off the Nigerian coast, a Panamanian tug was boarded by five men who rounded up the crew, smashed a bottle over the master's head and forced them all to hand over their belongings. A cargo ship attacked off the coast of Somalia launched parachute flares at the pirates when the captain realised they were about to open fire with a rocket-propelled grenade, and a gang of pirates who boarded a Canadian yacht anchored off Madagascar slashed the skipper's hand and legs, tried to strangle his wife and escaped with everything they had. Not that the marauders always have it their own way. The report discloses that in February a Maltese tanker successfully fought off an attack near Somalia by adopting a zig-zag course and turning its fire hoses on the pirate boat until the would-be attackers, who were shooting at the tanker, eventually gave up and sailed away. And earlier this month Guy Grieve, who writes "All at Sea'', a weekly account of his family's Caribbean sailing adventures in Sunday Telegraph Travel, described having to outrun a suspicious pirogue off the coast of Trinidad. Yesterday Adrian Flanagan, the lone round-the-world yachtsman who completed his 2½-year voyage last week, told The Sunday Telegraph how he nearly collided with a pirate ship 400 miles off the Brazilian coast. The 46-year-old author of a novel about pirates described how he kept watch for 48 hours with a loaded shotgun in his lap as the pirates tracked him across the ocean in a rusting 200ft vessel, before finally turning their attention elsewhere. He said: "I thought, 'I'm in trouble here - these guys have got to be pirates'. I broke out my pump-action shotgun, loaded it with seven rounds and cocked it.'' For 48 hours, they followed his sloop Barrabas while he kept watch and used his satellite telephone to contact his former wife in Britain and raise the alarm. "I called Louise and told her the situation. She was OK about it but I think she had an idea in her head of a guy with a wooden leg and eye patch - I don't think she really realised the level of threat. "These people are very, very vicious. They take what they want and scuttle the vessel with the bodies on board.'' Last week the IMB identified Nigeria as the world's most dangerous piracy hotspot, and warned that the country was ill-equipped to deal with the attackers. India and the Gulf of Aden rank second, and nine countries in the region have launched a drive to improve security. The French and American governments have also drafted a UN resolution to allow nations to pursue and arrest pirates.
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Related links Round the world couple fight pirates of the Caribbean
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