Think pirates and swashbuckling Captain Jack Sparrow comes to mind.
Reality, though, does not have that kind of swagger. Modern-day pirates tend to be your everyday variety fishermen who have taken up piracy as a second job. Instead of the Black Pearl, they commission their trusty boats to take them out to sea to fish for cash-rich but unarmed cargo ships that lumber temptingly before their eyes.
Or at least, this was largely the scenario before piracy became a multi-billion dollar business among Somali pirates who terrorized the maritime world during their peak years from 2007 to 2012.
Thoughts of pirates came back to me after that scare which I wrote about in last week’s article. My daughter and I feared that my husband’s ship had encountered pirates when he stayed silent for hours on end. We found out later that he and his crew had been busy rescuing refugees who had been adrift in the Mediterranean Sea for days without food and water.
I’m thankful that it weren’t the pirates as we had feared. Those people can be vicious. Everyone who’ve watched the 2013 movie ‘Captain Phillips’ which starred Tom Hanks, will agree with me. That movie was based on actual events and the portrayal of Capt. Phillips and his men, and their life on board a Maersk mother ship, was as real as it could get.
Writing this took me back to 2003 when my now 22-year old daughter, Abby, was still a toddler, and we joined her father onboard his ship, the P&O Nedlloyd Malindi. Its route took it from Singapore all the way to Tanzania.
It was my first time seeing anti-piracy measures on cargo vessels like the water cannon which delivers a powerful and impenetrable stream of water that blows away pirates trying to board the ship. Another was the barbed wire fence which surrounds the ship and supposedly prevents pirates from climbing.
But as we saw in ‘Captain Phillips’, they can only slow, but not deter.
Back then, piracy had not yet transformed into an organized business enterprise. It was still dominated by small-time Somali fishermen who moonlight as opportunistic predators that prey on unarmed, slow-moving cargo vessels.
Avoiding them wasn’t too difficult in those days. All my husband had to do was give the Somali coast a wide berth, like 200 nautical miles wide, just far enough to be beyond the reach of small fishing boats.
Somalia didn’t cause him much worry that time. His bigger concern was the Strait of Malacca which he couldn’t avoid passing through.
The Strait is 800 kilometers long and is funnel-shaped, with a width of only 65 kilometers in the south. It links Asia with the Middle East and Europe, carrying about 40 percent of the world’s trade. Today, more than 90,000 merchant ships ply this waterway every year.
This stretch is a natural hunting ground for modern buccaneers. However, pirates in that area weren’t into kidnapping crews and taking over ships for ransom, unlike what their Somali counterparts later became notorious for. They just went for cash and whatever valuables they could steal from the crew. They might even break into some of the container vans hoping that they’d find electronic products like TV and cellphones, maybe some kitchen equipment, or even chocolates, that they could easily carry off and sell in the black market later on.
Incidents like these usually end without casualties unless the crew fights back, which they seldom do. The pirates just want to do their business as quickly as possible, before naval patrol ships could come to the distressed freighter’s rescue.
Finding an officer’s family onboard might be a different matter as nobody could guess how they would react to it. This became my husband’s serious concern when the Malindi was about to traverse through the Strait. With the narrowest point being only 2.7 kilometers, a distance that the ladies of Ocean 6 could easily cover under their own steam, the threat of being boarded was real.
The obvious solution was to hide us and erase all traces of our presence onboard the ship. So off to the deepest bowels we spent our nights. We were so close to engines that I could barely hear myself think and the vibrations were so strong it literally felt like living on top of a jackhammer.
Thinking back, that area must be where present-day ship citadels are now located, or maybe not. Just making a wild guess here.
A citadel is an anti-piracy measure and is a heavily-fortified room where the crew could hide in case pirates have boarded them.
The International Maritime Security Centre has required this to be installed in ships. It should not only have food, water, and medical supplies, but also effective communication channels to the outside world, proper ventilation system, CCTV cameras, control of the engines, and for some, even the ability to navigate while still holed up, awaiting rescue by naval forces.
Other than citadels, ship owners also hire armed security guards who would escort their ships in high-risk areas. I’ve seen photos of the men who have escorted my husband’s ships through the years. They do pack serious firepower.
With armed guards on board, the crew wouldn’t have to be helpless against heavily-armed pirates and would have a better chance at dissuading them from getting close to the ship.
They also have the Ship Security Alert System (SSAS). It’s much like what the banks have. Just press the button, and in the case of ships which are under attack by pirates, the company is instantaneously alerted and this starts the ball rolling, calls are made, and regional anti-piracy response centers kick into action.
The reader may find this world which I’m writing about all too strange and new, distant even, but believe me, it actually isn’t.
Take your phone, for instance. How did it get to you? How about those M&Ms that you’ve been nibbling? How did it make its way to the stores?
You never knew it, but they’ve been through weather so rough it made seasoned seafarers sick, or in waters that are heavily infested with human predators, but kept safe, and brought to you intact by lonely men who have to live away from their families for months on end.
Practically everything around you that’s not locally-made like the TV across your room, or the cologne that you just sprayed on you, or even that couch that you’re sitting on (or the material it’s made of), wouldn’t have come to you if not for those ships that’s been literally moving the world and keeping economies alive every second of the day.
Now that you’re seeing them this way, seamen and their world no longer seem too distant, do they?
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Author’s email: olgaluciauy@yahoo.com
