oooooh yeah.. this is exciting stuff… everyone loves a little chaos, they just don’t admit it…
Allright.. so piracy is basically any crime committed against a boat, like hijacking it, it and it’s crew, or hauling off it’s crew for ransom, just sneaking on and stealing things, or stealing what’s on it by force….and of course it has a fabled history… in the west and the new world, it was both an outlaw and opportunistic thing and an ‘extension of diplomacy; with state sponsored pirates like Drake. The Spanish Galleons would come from Manila to Acapulco, Mexico, and then gold and silver from the Andes and Mexican mountains and wherever else it could be found would be combined with asian trade and taken across the Caribbean and Atlantic in what were eventually huge flotillas filled with just about everything you could imagine valuable. This proved quite tempting to both independents and the Brits. I once spent a few weeks in the Panamanian town of Portobelo, and it was famous for being one of two or three carribean ports where gold and silver from Peru was loaded onto galleons for the once a year Armada back to spain, and I had always found the pirate obsession annoying after living in Florida, and felt the stories were overblow. It turns out they are anything but overblown. Pirates took Portobello at least once, and I could trace the battle to an old falling apart fort behind the town that now has a population of just a thousand or two. Nearby a group of salvages had found an old ship thought to have been one belonging to columbus on his third journey, and I could touch the guns, sitting in a saline solution to preserve them until they could be stabilized, and it all gave me a thrill.. I won’t be celebrating by getting drunk and wearing black leather like a lot of tool bags do, but it did give me an appreciating. Later in Cartagena, I learned of an amazing battle that happened on a spit of land now occupied by the Colombian Naval College, where 300 pirates overwhelmed the town, sacked it, and decided to stay a few months, although they never found the Cathedral gold, hidden by the Spanish bishop for months.. In MAdagascar, South East Asia and the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Philippines, and Malaysia, perhaps even further east, there was a similar culture and trade that wasn’t stamped out until the late 1800’s… it was just part of life to raid and take, from the Chinese, from each other, and then from Europeans as they arrived. Gong back through time, as long as there has been trade and boats, there has been piracy…the romans and greeks I think both dealt with it, and the Vikings could be considered pirates of sorts, although they sure didn’t stop at boats, and Indian Ocean trade routes had similar run ins with people in little enclaves…
In the modern era, there are a few hot spots… Indonesian Piracy popped up again some years ago around Singapore, and still happens in the far flung areas of Indonesia and the Philippines, but it garnered attention when guys would shimmy up bamboo ladders from pangas around the turn of this century from the islands of Bintan and Batam, within sight of Singapore, or nearby Sumatra, and rob boats headed to or from that famous trading port, or just through the legendary Straights of Malacca. Around the world there are robbery attempts in the Caribbean and elsewhere that are classified as piracy, and can have tragic consequences, but are not really piracy in the sense of being organized boat going operations in the classic sense, more like hoods borrowing a buddies fishing boat to rob a yacht… it’s piracy, but it’s not ‘Piracy’… the world is getting so settled, the areas of chaos less and less, so that it’s less of a problem.. the global reach of military forces makes retribution possible from anywhere, quicker than people imagine,s o ti has placed global shipping out of reach for all but the boldest and most desperate.. since the Mayaguez Incident, the US has had sophisticated skills built up to seize ships professionally if they are captured, and just about any navy ship, of which there are hundreds of American ones alone roaming the sea at any one time, in this era of Pax Americana, can do all but seize a ship.. definitely follow it, harrass the pirates, and bring in assaulters if not interdict the pirates to and from their destination with helicopters, launches, and occasionally the big ship it’s self…
So when I mention desperate enough, surely I am talking about the spate of Somali Piracy that ran from like 2009 to about 2012…in arond around the horn of Africa…everyone who saw the film Black Hawk down knows that Somali is a failed state, although there is an area called Somaliland, it’s Northwestern corner, that has kind of rejoined the world and lives civilly, but the rest of the country still goes through bouts of rebellion and fundamentalist governments.. they actually had peace and an oppressive muslim government for like 6 months, but the US smelled Al Qaeda, and had them overthrown with Ethiopian troops, and it was back to chaos.. out of this chaos sprang a group of real honest to goodness pirates, like Blackbeard, or the Barbary pirates of the Mediterranean coast that the US Marines famously helped clean out int he early 1800s, in fact, three of them have made the list of Famour Pirates through history on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pirates
So what did I learn about Piracy on the CMA CGM Libra? well, that it’s a pretty rare circumstance.. the Captain had a great story of being taken hostage, but by North Korea.. I will tell that one later.. it’s more funny than scary… This ship doesn’t go anywhere near pirate prone areas, but some of the sailors have been through those areas. One crew member told me about taking a passenger around the world through the Red Sea on a previous contract, and he said the guy, I think an American, was on deck the whole time with binoculars almost praying for an attack out of humor and boredom, but they saw nothing.. it became a joke on the ship, but I think one that the American was in on, like a good natured Snipe hunting expedition with the kids…
There was a fax machine that existed to print pirate info as it came, from some Piracy Agency in England I think, the IMB-PRC (International Maritime Bureau- Piracy Reporting Center), and a sheaf of reports I could read back through hanging in the lounge on the side of the bridge if I wanted… I dont think we got an update the whole time I was aboard, and the most recent one was just about an incident where someone basically mugged the crew of a fishing boat someplace in the southern Philippines… since I got off the boat, the muslim fundamentalists on Mindanao, the major south island of the Philippines, have been under attack from the government, who is routing them from their base areas in the jungle, and they committed a pretty violent act of piracy, but this was the closest pirate group to our route, and still a thousand miles if not more from Hong Kong.
Some guys told me about going through the Red Sea to the Suez Canal recently and getting mercenaries on board.. they would hang out until they were clear of reach of Somalia, then go home.. the guys said they were tough and looked professional, and that is about it…
I never got the impression that there were guns on board, and I think they would just do what philips did, lock the doors, zig zag, and call the navy… the second officer, who I did ask about it with a joke that I knew the chances were slimmer than slim, and he told me the Libra was too damn big, it would never be hijacked because it’s hard to get on even a small boat like the Alabama, carrying maybe 2000 teu, but hauling the amount we are, 11,400 makes getting onto deck through all but the pilot hole a huuuuuge climb.. I used to take breaks on the gangplank the ship is so tall…
But there was a pirate attack while I was on board.. when we got to China, our last stop before Hong Kong, chowan, right in the pearl river bay that separates Macau, Hong Kong, and old Canton, now Guandong, the pumping heart of chinese commerce, there were two guys we let onto the boat to set up a shop selling trinkets and to hang out right at the top of the gangplank before the double doors to go into the accommodation. They always have cheap crap like flashlights and other things they think the crew will want, and they call buddies to give us rides into town and such, and I think we enjoy having them around to kind of entertain us after weeks with each other, some local color, smoking good natured cantonese middle aged wheeler dealers, and they had a stack of movies, including, right on top, you guessed it, about 6 copies of Captain Phillips, allegedly in Blue Ray, but it turned out to be a screener (where they set up a video camera in the theater, and you see people getting up to go the the bathroom, and the sound is horrible), although no harm done for a buck… this act of Piracy was the new use of the word as Copyright infringement… if Metallica was there they would have thrown a fit, but I couldn’t help myself. I had been preparing for my trip as It hit theaters, even playing two blocks from my last hotel in jack london square, but a convenient time never came up to watch it, and I think I balked once at the 12 dollar price on third street in Santa Monica (no wonder people buy pirate copies, you theater owning pricks!) it couldn’t have been a hotter topic, and I hadn’t seen it yet. So I bought it, took it to my room and watched it with the shadows of the big container cranes working out my window dancing across my glossy screen.. it seemed like the perfect place to watch it, making me glad I hadn’t seen it in theaters..I was a bit moved by the end, it was kind of heavy, and it felt weird that the boat, although smaller, felt like an older more sun beaten version of the Libra.. down to the details of the little ship diagrams on each floor.. it was like watching a crime movie about an apartment building similar to yours… somehow juicier through personal knowledge.
Anyhow, not to trivialize piracy, the Maersk was just one example of this many hundred strong Somali Group that took dozens of boats, and there was a lot of action between the US, Dutch, and other navies against them for a couple years there. This reality show for the young american male targeted network Spike sure didn’t expect to be this busy:
but it is quiet again for the most part I hear… Once in asia I went on a youtube binge watching videos, and there was a good collection of actions between pmercinaries, navies and pirates, and not to mention the rescue of two hostages in northern Somalia on the night of the State of the Union address in 2012,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-forces-rescue-kidnapped-aid-workers-jessica-buchanan-and-poul-hagen-thisted-in-somalia/2012/01/25/gIQA7WopPQ_story.html
There is a seperate war going on with Muslim Fundamentalists in the South of Somalia that led to this SEAl Raid, the War on Terror and the Piracy becoming to the SEALS what the BArbary Pirates were to the Marines.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2446081/Navy-SEAL-Team-6-raids-Somali-terror-stronghold-Delta-Force-captures-U-S-Embassy-suspect.html
but I think the difference is that these pirate gangs work out of the ports and villages north of Mogadishu closer to the horn, and these guys are to the south.. so much going on!
I will leave you with this: in my glut of video watching after the trip, to understand this better with my trip having given me context for life on bord and international shipping, I came across this video:
http://www.thatvideosite.com/v/12770/dutch-commandos-storm-a-german-cargo-ship-taken-over-by-pirates
so that’s what it looks like on top of the containers during the day… I only got to see it at night when the second officer couldn’t see me! it’s funny to hear dutch people trying to act tough by the way…
it’s hard not to feel bad for all involved, from these hungry somali guys taking naps in the western comfort of these nice air conditioned ships they get to capture,only to be rousted by these annoying soldiers, to the ship crews terrified by the arbitrary nature of these desperate men boarding their ships, occasionally murdering to even the investors who are forced to risk their boats and pay ransoms, but it does give people something to talk about… that’s the biggest thing I learned about piracy crossing the Pacific!