Modern Pirates Looting the Seas by Pedro F Marcelino
For both younger and older nostalgic boys dreaming of Emilio Salgari’s adventures of corsairs, piracy might seem like a Sunday afternoon Movie Network feature. Long kept astray of this manly universe, also women now venture into deep waters, admiring outrageous Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean (2, 3). Mildly, funnily and entertainingly as this latter movie approaches the theme, however, piracy is far from being just children’s tales. While thousands of fathers read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island to their sons as bed time stories, a scaring number of people see themselves swept by likewise events in real life, nearly every week.
According to International Chamber of Commerce's UN-endorsed piracy watchdog International Maritime Bureau, the period ranging between January and September 2005 registered 192 reports of piracy and armed robbery in the sea. Brazilian waters, the Caribbean, Central America’s Pacific coast, the Red Sea region, the lawless Somalian waters, as well as those of neighbouring countries and big areas of West Africa's Gulf of Guinea are among the most dangerous regions of the globe to navigate in. However, the real statistic risk concentrates in the Malacca and Singapore Straits, in much of Indonesian and Philippine waters, as well as in the South China Sea and off the coasts of India and Bangladesh. Perhaps for that reason, the IMB’s piracy reporting center is located in Malaysia.
The Hijacking of the Aquille Lauro, portrayed on television in 1989, came across as a terrorism case in a world that had then to deal with issues in Palestine or Lebanon, and elsewhere today. Three years later, in 1992, this organization had acquired an observer status at the United Nations General Assembly, along with Interpol, and started monitoring piracy cases, fighting for safer navigation from its permanent surveillance outpost in centrally located Kuala Lumpur. It was not until then that the world came to terms with the fact that pirates, buccaneers and filibusters were far from being a 17th century romantic story.
Early in October 2005, Mombasa-registered MV Torgelow, a chartered ship with a cargo of tea, oil and fuel was hijacked off the Somali coast, only a week after its sister-ship MV Semlow had been taken by assault by heavily armed pirates. The MV Semlow carried mostly UN aid for Somalia.
The Kenyan Government formally accused both Somali warlords and the Interim Government of involvement in these and other cases that make this region the deadliest in recent piracy maps (19 freighter seizures since March, among other attacks). After more than one month and the intervention of local elders, the vessels were freed. The crew members seemed to be shaken but well.
However, in early November, a new report landed in the newspapers headlines in the West, when luxury cruise ship Seabourn Spirit came under attack – again near Somali waters, but 100 miles offshore – while heading for the Seychelles. At least two fast boats chased the vessel, firing automatic weapons and rockets. A skilled crew managed to maneuver the boat out of trouble, without shooting back (which is by now a common event in such cases). All the 302 passengers were unharmed. This is, however, rarely the case. Most vessels are bigger and difficult to maneuver, have less skilled crews and can easily be overpowered by smaller, faster boats.
Part of the problem, in fact, is deeply related to a major maritime safety issue, including lack of appropriate institutional control and actual lenience in matters such as the existence and increasing popularity of flags of convenience (FOCs), an usual resource for maritime cargo companies. It is not at all uncommon to come across a modern cruise ship owned by a Norwegian company, registered in the port of Monrovia, Liberia, and flying a Mongolian flag (when Mongolia is miles away from any sea). Although lucky enough to escape alive, the crew in the Seabourn Spirit made the difference. As for the rest, Seabourn Cruises is a Miami-based company, but the ship used a Bahamian flag. For the matter, the proud Commonwealth of the Bahamas commercializes its flag via a company in the City of London. More up-to-date pirates reccur to hi-tech sonars and specialize on hunting down vessels flying a flag of convenience, once they are less likely to offer the same amount of resistance or even to have the same networked security measures in place.
The UN’s International Maritime Organization has attempted to tackle these issues, making clear that lawlessness inland and lawlessness at the sea are a deadly combination. Carrying a FOC, a ship manages to avoid taxes and stricter labour regulations. With maritime law and safety memorandums on the increase in both the EU and North America, many of their own companies opt for such expedients, saving on tax money, routine safety controls and also on their crews. Instead of qualified, well-paid professionals, it is not at all uncommon to come across freighters with a qualified Captain from the UAE and a medley-cast of Philipino, Bangladeshi, Indian and Peruvian seamen performing their tasks with minimum know-how, and minimum rights. In most cases, the labour conditions (including but not limited to pay check and length of shifts) are poor. While the International Transport Workers Federation frequently blows the whistle on such cases, its power is almost null, unless hard law is enforced by Governments of developed countries. The fact is, even law-abiding Germany uses a rather unique German International Ship Register (GIS), its very own flag of convenience among countries the likes of Tuvalu, Myanmar or Tonga. But so do Malta, English Gibraltar, the Isle of Man or the Dutch Antilles – all under the European Union’s own jurisdiction.
This situation also enables the international transference of ships, sold by Western-based companies to, say, Indian ones, at age 30, hardly afloat. Once there, the hull is repaired, and the ship navigates to a port of convenience, such as Freetown, Sierra Leone, where it is “dismantled” in the records, but painted anew in reality. Next thing you know, it is owned by a company registered in the Cayman Islands and is docking in Europe under a new name, as a "safe" ship.
The Prestige catastrophe in Galicia, Spain, in 2002, as well as other oils spills, would have been avoided, had the European Maritime Safety Agency been created before and made to work. However, its proposal came only after the disaster, and it has been based in Brussels temporarily, waiting for its settlement and full start in Lisbon, Portugal, as an outpost for maritime law enforcement in the EU space. However, as many other issues in Europe, much happens between the declaration of intentions and the actual events conducting to a more acceptable state of affairs, all the while legislation in place lacking actual enforcement. The Prestige was operated by a Greek company, owned by a Liberian one, under assignment for a Russian oil company based in Switzerland… and flying a Bahamian flag. Regardless of all other facts, Bahamas' doubtful law prevails in most cases, and responsibility is not easy if at all traceable. That makes the case for flags of convenience quite blatant.
Which brings us back to piracy. While Western governments and institutions urge less developed countries to put a hold to acts of piracy in their waters, they themselves tacitly accept a corrupt, sketchy status quo that offers larger profit margins to their own companies. A government that is unscrupulous enough to allow the use of its own flag, aloof of international advisory boards, is more often than not likely to rebuff accusations of piracy in its territorial waters, or starting on its ports.
When, in 1995, French explorer and adventurer Jean-Louis Etienne received me aboard his unique research vessel Antarctica, during the Wintering in Spitsberg expedition (Hivernage au Spitzberg), I felt lucky for the unique opportunity. So much so, that the it disturbed me to find out years later that she had been sold and re-baptized as Seamaster.
The new owner, New Zealand’s hero seafarer and explorer Sir Peter Blake, kept the usage of the boat faithful to the intentions of its maker in the port of Brest. For some time, he conducted the famous Blakexpeditions, a lighthouse of environmental awareness prowesses that skilfully gathered the media’s attention to those issues. On November 30th 2001, Sir Peter bothered the wrong group of people while working with BBC in the production of a documentary about deforestation in the Brazilian rain forest. The Seamaster, a flat-hull ship able to navigate in iced waters as well as in shallow rivers had been collecting evidence in the depths of the Amazon River, and had just returned to the Atlantic shores of Amapá, where it had to wait for a permit to sail up the coast to meet her sister ship in the Orinoco River. At 10 p.m. on December 1st, eight pirates armed with sword-like knifes and automatic assault weapons boarded the vessel, easily seizing control and overpowering the crew, the skipper and a couple reporters. The cameraman filmed from the plexiglass-clad living-room, the last footage showing signs of distress and sounds of gun shots, while he describes in disbelief how a pirate had just taken control of the deck and bridge. Two members of the crew had been injured by then. Blake, apparently the first to understand what was going on, suddenly ran out of his cabin, holding a shotgun and shouting “Not on my boat!”. The crew recalls he looked enraged. The pirate in the bridge ran out, chased by the explorer, who was shot twice on the back, as soon as he went out on the deck. The thugs fled in rapid semi-rigid power boats, taking only the ship’s spare, an engine and a few watches.
Although the crew tried to save his life, Blake died shortly after, as the BBC reporter filmed the aftermath of the attack. Word in Amapá was, at the time, that Blake had been executed under the orders of local wood merchants. Days later, seven members of the Sea Rats gang (Ratos do Mar) – an organized piracy group – were arrested. The leader escaped. All the men were convicted, the killer to 36 years in jail. New Zealand mourned and presented an official complaint to a wobbly and ashamed Brazilian Government, that issued an official apology.
Despite Lady Pippa Blake’s efforts, neither Greenpeace nor the Jacques Cousteau Society could maintain the Seamaster, and the boat ended up bought by ‘prêt-a-porter entrepeneur Etienne Bourgeois, owner of the agnés b. house. Lady Pippa has ever since become an advocate against piracy. New Zealand’s sailing champion was perhaps the first famous victim of modern piracy, and the publicity that this case generated embarrassed the Brazilian Government into taking more severe measures for coastal control. However, international efforts are far from having put an end to this anachronic danger. While the Western world worries about a terrorist threat and container monitoring, elsewhere on the globe both commercial vessels and private yachts fall prey to sophisticated, violent and well-armed lacuns, corsairs and other pirates.
According to International Chamber of Commerce's UN-endorsed piracy watchdog International Maritime Bureau, the period ranging between January and September 2005 registered 192 reports of piracy and armed robbery in the sea. Brazilian waters, the Caribbean, Central America’s Pacific coast, the Red Sea region, the lawless Somalian waters, as well as those of neighbouring countries and big areas of West Africa's Gulf of Guinea are among the most dangerous regions of the globe to navigate in. However, the real statistic risk concentrates in the Malacca and Singapore Straits, in much of Indonesian and Philippine waters, as well as in the South China Sea and off the coasts of India and Bangladesh. Perhaps for that reason, the IMB’s piracy reporting center is located in Malaysia.
The Hijacking of the Aquille Lauro, portrayed on television in 1989, came across as a terrorism case in a world that had then to deal with issues in Palestine or Lebanon, and elsewhere today. Three years later, in 1992, this organization had acquired an observer status at the United Nations General Assembly, along with Interpol, and started monitoring piracy cases, fighting for safer navigation from its permanent surveillance outpost in centrally located Kuala Lumpur. It was not until then that the world came to terms with the fact that pirates, buccaneers and filibusters were far from being a 17th century romantic story.
Early in October 2005, Mombasa-registered MV Torgelow, a chartered ship with a cargo of tea, oil and fuel was hijacked off the Somali coast, only a week after its sister-ship MV Semlow had been taken by assault by heavily armed pirates. The MV Semlow carried mostly UN aid for Somalia.
The Kenyan Government formally accused both Somali warlords and the Interim Government of involvement in these and other cases that make this region the deadliest in recent piracy maps (19 freighter seizures since March, among other attacks). After more than one month and the intervention of local elders, the vessels were freed. The crew members seemed to be shaken but well.
However, in early November, a new report landed in the newspapers headlines in the West, when luxury cruise ship Seabourn Spirit came under attack – again near Somali waters, but 100 miles offshore – while heading for the Seychelles. At least two fast boats chased the vessel, firing automatic weapons and rockets. A skilled crew managed to maneuver the boat out of trouble, without shooting back (which is by now a common event in such cases). All the 302 passengers were unharmed. This is, however, rarely the case. Most vessels are bigger and difficult to maneuver, have less skilled crews and can easily be overpowered by smaller, faster boats.
Part of the problem, in fact, is deeply related to a major maritime safety issue, including lack of appropriate institutional control and actual lenience in matters such as the existence and increasing popularity of flags of convenience (FOCs), an usual resource for maritime cargo companies. It is not at all uncommon to come across a modern cruise ship owned by a Norwegian company, registered in the port of Monrovia, Liberia, and flying a Mongolian flag (when Mongolia is miles away from any sea). Although lucky enough to escape alive, the crew in the Seabourn Spirit made the difference. As for the rest, Seabourn Cruises is a Miami-based company, but the ship used a Bahamian flag. For the matter, the proud Commonwealth of the Bahamas commercializes its flag via a company in the City of London. More up-to-date pirates reccur to hi-tech sonars and specialize on hunting down vessels flying a flag of convenience, once they are less likely to offer the same amount of resistance or even to have the same networked security measures in place.
The UN’s International Maritime Organization has attempted to tackle these issues, making clear that lawlessness inland and lawlessness at the sea are a deadly combination. Carrying a FOC, a ship manages to avoid taxes and stricter labour regulations. With maritime law and safety memorandums on the increase in both the EU and North America, many of their own companies opt for such expedients, saving on tax money, routine safety controls and also on their crews. Instead of qualified, well-paid professionals, it is not at all uncommon to come across freighters with a qualified Captain from the UAE and a medley-cast of Philipino, Bangladeshi, Indian and Peruvian seamen performing their tasks with minimum know-how, and minimum rights. In most cases, the labour conditions (including but not limited to pay check and length of shifts) are poor. While the International Transport Workers Federation frequently blows the whistle on such cases, its power is almost null, unless hard law is enforced by Governments of developed countries. The fact is, even law-abiding Germany uses a rather unique German International Ship Register (GIS), its very own flag of convenience among countries the likes of Tuvalu, Myanmar or Tonga. But so do Malta, English Gibraltar, the Isle of Man or the Dutch Antilles – all under the European Union’s own jurisdiction.
This situation also enables the international transference of ships, sold by Western-based companies to, say, Indian ones, at age 30, hardly afloat. Once there, the hull is repaired, and the ship navigates to a port of convenience, such as Freetown, Sierra Leone, where it is “dismantled” in the records, but painted anew in reality. Next thing you know, it is owned by a company registered in the Cayman Islands and is docking in Europe under a new name, as a "safe" ship.
The Prestige catastrophe in Galicia, Spain, in 2002, as well as other oils spills, would have been avoided, had the European Maritime Safety Agency been created before and made to work. However, its proposal came only after the disaster, and it has been based in Brussels temporarily, waiting for its settlement and full start in Lisbon, Portugal, as an outpost for maritime law enforcement in the EU space. However, as many other issues in Europe, much happens between the declaration of intentions and the actual events conducting to a more acceptable state of affairs, all the while legislation in place lacking actual enforcement. The Prestige was operated by a Greek company, owned by a Liberian one, under assignment for a Russian oil company based in Switzerland… and flying a Bahamian flag. Regardless of all other facts, Bahamas' doubtful law prevails in most cases, and responsibility is not easy if at all traceable. That makes the case for flags of convenience quite blatant.
Which brings us back to piracy. While Western governments and institutions urge less developed countries to put a hold to acts of piracy in their waters, they themselves tacitly accept a corrupt, sketchy status quo that offers larger profit margins to their own companies. A government that is unscrupulous enough to allow the use of its own flag, aloof of international advisory boards, is more often than not likely to rebuff accusations of piracy in its territorial waters, or starting on its ports.
When, in 1995, French explorer and adventurer Jean-Louis Etienne received me aboard his unique research vessel Antarctica, during the Wintering in Spitsberg expedition (Hivernage au Spitzberg), I felt lucky for the unique opportunity. So much so, that the it disturbed me to find out years later that she had been sold and re-baptized as Seamaster.
The new owner, New Zealand’s hero seafarer and explorer Sir Peter Blake, kept the usage of the boat faithful to the intentions of its maker in the port of Brest. For some time, he conducted the famous Blakexpeditions, a lighthouse of environmental awareness prowesses that skilfully gathered the media’s attention to those issues. On November 30th 2001, Sir Peter bothered the wrong group of people while working with BBC in the production of a documentary about deforestation in the Brazilian rain forest. The Seamaster, a flat-hull ship able to navigate in iced waters as well as in shallow rivers had been collecting evidence in the depths of the Amazon River, and had just returned to the Atlantic shores of Amapá, where it had to wait for a permit to sail up the coast to meet her sister ship in the Orinoco River. At 10 p.m. on December 1st, eight pirates armed with sword-like knifes and automatic assault weapons boarded the vessel, easily seizing control and overpowering the crew, the skipper and a couple reporters. The cameraman filmed from the plexiglass-clad living-room, the last footage showing signs of distress and sounds of gun shots, while he describes in disbelief how a pirate had just taken control of the deck and bridge. Two members of the crew had been injured by then. Blake, apparently the first to understand what was going on, suddenly ran out of his cabin, holding a shotgun and shouting “Not on my boat!”. The crew recalls he looked enraged. The pirate in the bridge ran out, chased by the explorer, who was shot twice on the back, as soon as he went out on the deck. The thugs fled in rapid semi-rigid power boats, taking only the ship’s spare, an engine and a few watches.
Although the crew tried to save his life, Blake died shortly after, as the BBC reporter filmed the aftermath of the attack. Word in Amapá was, at the time, that Blake had been executed under the orders of local wood merchants. Days later, seven members of the Sea Rats gang (Ratos do Mar) – an organized piracy group – were arrested. The leader escaped. All the men were convicted, the killer to 36 years in jail. New Zealand mourned and presented an official complaint to a wobbly and ashamed Brazilian Government, that issued an official apology.
Despite Lady Pippa Blake’s efforts, neither Greenpeace nor the Jacques Cousteau Society could maintain the Seamaster, and the boat ended up bought by ‘prêt-a-porter entrepeneur Etienne Bourgeois, owner of the agnés b. house. Lady Pippa has ever since become an advocate against piracy. New Zealand’s sailing champion was perhaps the first famous victim of modern piracy, and the publicity that this case generated embarrassed the Brazilian Government into taking more severe measures for coastal control. However, international efforts are far from having put an end to this anachronic danger. While the Western world worries about a terrorist threat and container monitoring, elsewhere on the globe both commercial vessels and private yachts fall prey to sophisticated, violent and well-armed lacuns, corsairs and other pirates.
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