Modern pirates

A large container ship, the Australian Star, was making its way across the South China Sea bound for New Zealand. It was evening and Captain Peter Newton left the bridge for his cabin. As the ship passed the Indonesian island of Bintan, nine armed men burst into Captain Newton’s cabin. They held a machete to his neck and his hands were bound with rope. The gang leader told him that if he didn’t open  the ship’s safe – or if he triggered its alarm – he would be killed. Once the pirates had pocketed the  $20,000 they found in the safe, they descended to their small craft using a rope.

Pirates have seemed glamorous ever since the days of Robert Louis Stevenson. Pirate stories are adored by Hollywood but real-life pirates are profiting from plunder of the high seas as never before. Attacks by modern pirates have increased by 168% in the past decade. Since Captain Newton was attacked in 1992,

there have been 3,583 piratical attacks reported worldwide, causing 340 deaths. Last November, a ship called Seabourn Spirit was ambushed off the coast of Somalia. Pirates with rocket-propelled grenades in two boats were repelled when the crew directed a ‘sonic blaster’ at their attackers.

Robbery at sea entered a golden age during the 17th century, when European powers colonised the Caribbean. Pirates such as Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach and ‘Calico’ Jack Rackham attacked heavily laden trading ships, taking advantage of the political vacuum and a secluded coastline perfect for ambushes. As the age of empire took hold and naval forces imposed order on the high seas, piracy lost its vigour; now, with imperial decline, it is regaining strength. A variety of conditions – from the cost-cutting of the shipping industry to the absence of international arrangements to tackle piracy – is aiding modern pirates.

The centre of modern-day piracy is the South China Sea, scene of more than a third of last year’s 266 reported raids. Waters around failing states are particularly dangerous. The Indian Ocean off Somalia is home to a special brand of piracy, in which ships are hijacked and crews are kidnapped and ransomed.

Modern pirates use intelligence (often tip-offs from corrupt port officials), satellite phones and tracking technology to plan attacks on valuable cargo, but one tool of modern pirates remains the same: the rope and grappling hook. Storming a ship in motion requires special forces-style skills and many in the shipping industry believe some of the more sophisticated modern pirates have a military background. A relative absence of risk also is behind the rise in piracy, according to Newton.

‘We don’t carry armed guards and nobody is going to pursue you because it is international waters and no one has jurisdiction,’ he says. ‘Once they get on board, there is nothing you can do if they are armed and you are not.’ Another reason why piracy is so risk free is that many victims fail to report the crime. Shipping companies would rather bear the loss of $20,000 stolen from a safe than report it to their insurers and face a large increase in premiums. Insurance premiums rose by 300% for vessels entering Yemeni waters after a suicide boat rammed into Limburg, a French oil tanker, in October 2002. Ships sometimes do not report piracy because they fear that no country will bother to investigate crimes in international waters.

Naval vessels often discourage pirates but rarely want to capture and detain them in international waters. The US navy recently caught and detained pirates who attacked a Thai fishing vessel near Somalia, but had to release the men because neither the Thai government nor any other would put them on trial. Where ships have been seized and crews kidnapped off Somalia, shipping companies simply pay the ransom demands.

About 90% of world trade is carried by sea. Cost-cutting has made modern cargo ships more vulnerable than ever to attack, according to Andrew Linington of Numas, the ship officers’ union in London. There are only 20-24 crew members on modern container ships. Usually, just two crew patrol the bridge at night. ‘You can have ships the size of two football pitches and at any one time you will have just five or six people up and working,’ says Linington.

Few companies are willing to pay for security measures such as non-lethal electric fences or sonic weapons. As well as being small in number, modern multinational crews are poorly paid. Many boats use Filipino crew members, who take home $400 a month. For that money, few captains expect their crew to risk their lives by defending their ship. Low wages also lead to the occasional inside job: crew members can be tempted to pro­vide pirates with information on freight and opportune times to strike. Even oceans full of warships have seen an increase. There were no attacks in Iraqi waters in 2004, yet last year there were 10 opportunistic assaults on oil tankers and cargo vessels near Basra. Piracy provides a juicy example of soft targets for terrorists. It would only take couple of major incidents in a key area – such as the Suez canal – to cause chaos.

‘Piracy isn’t fantasy,’ says Linington. ‘It is happening on a weekly basis. It is an advertisement to terrorists that it is easy to attack something that is so crucial to world trade.’