Pirates' plunder persists on seas

Piracy, with its image of yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, may seem to belong to another age but recent cases show that what one maritime newspaper called the "third-oldest profession" is alive and well.

A woman was shot and wounded aboard a Shell tanker in the Caribbean last year, while a British man was allegedly murdered in the past month after men forced their way aboard a yacht off the coast of Somalia.

According to Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau, which has a piracy reporting centre in Singapore, 202 cases of piracy were reported in 1998.

It is suspected many cases are not reported, especially if there has been no loss of life.

Piracy is no longer confined to the Caribbean. Modern blackspots include the waters off west Africa, the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca, separating Malaysia and Singapore from Indonesia.

Piracy ranges from the theft of items on deck to hijacking. At least 67 seafarers were killed in 1998 and more than 200 crew members or passengers taken hostage. Fifteen ships were hijacked, many of them smaller cargo vessels in the Far East.

"Today's pirates are heavily armed, experienced sailors. They know exactly where to take the vessel to illegally discharge its cargo," Mukundan said in Navy News, the Royal Navy newspaper. There are strong suspicions of participation by at least rogue elements of the armed forces of countries near the more perilous waters.

The Royal Navy has been criticised for not doing enough. A merchant navy captain gave the case of a British warship failing to help a vessel under attack.

Others say that the Royal Navy is already overstretched, down to just over 30 frigates, compared to more than 80 in the 1960s. International law also limits the action possible.

The merchant navy officers' union, Numast, believes shipowners could do a lot more. It has been trying to put piracy on the political agenda for some time, with presentations at conferences and meetings with the Foreign Office. "More use could be made of closed- circuit television so that any vessel approaching a ship through a radar blind spot could be seen," said Andrew Linington, editor of the union paper, The Shipping Telegraph.

"Most ships have radar blind spots, often caused by funnels, and often the area astern is a major blind spot. Shipowners claim that they have extra men on watch in danger areas, but the complement of so many ships has been steadily cut in recent years, so often the manpower isn't available. Crew numbers have more than halved in the past 20 or 30 years. Now, there is a new generation of ships with crew numbers in single figures," he said.

NUMAST confirms suspicions of renegade navies and local officialdom. A union member was killed by pirates off Indonesia. An Indonesian naval vessel took the ship into port, where the authorities initially detained the crew and insisted that they had mutinied.

"The attacks are often disciplined and the type of craft used also give the impression that there is involvement by the armed services of some countries," said Linington. Suspicion also falls on authorities ashore. Ships hijacked to ports in mainland China have eventually been traced, but long after the cargo has been disposed of.

Shipowners try to play down the problem. P&O-Nedlloyd, with a fleet of 112 ships, said that it operated container ships where unauthorised boarding was hindered by the high freeboard - the height of the main deck above the water.

BP admitted to a problem with its large fleet of oil tankers, which have little freeboard when heavily laden. "There is a problem with piracy in some parts of the world," said a spokesman. "The most serious was eight years ago, when the crew of one ship were held at gunpoint while the safe was opened." BP advises tanker crews not to antagonise pirates.

Numast continues to press for government action. Linington said one way forward could be "a series of bilateral agreements, allowing hot pursuit into territorial waters."

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