Piracy feared as another ship goes missing

[bleachedblack]

Piracy feared as another ship goes missing
       
17:56, July 19, 2007

A St. Vincent and Grenadines- flagged cargo ship has been missing for three weeks but rescue efforts are underway to locate the vessel, a Kenyan maritime official said on Thursday.

Andrew Mwangura, director of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers Assistance Program, said the MV Reef Azania vanished 20 days ago after leaving Dubai carrying tons of general cargo for delivery in Seychelles and Zanzibar.

Mwangura said the ship owners have not located the vessel which had 12 crew members -- eight Tanzanians and four Indians -- onboard.

"The MV Reef Azania left Dubai 20 days ago and was to deliver cargo to Seychelles and then to Zanzibar but no one knows where the sailors are," he told Xinhua by telephone from Mombasa.

"We don't know where the vessel went missing but intense efforts were underway to establish the fate of the missing ship."

If it is confirmed that the MV Reef Azania was seized by Somali pirates, it would bring to five the number of foreign vessels held off the Horn of Africa nation in some of the most dangerous waters in the world.

Four ships are currently held by Somali pirates -- two from South Korea, one from Denmark and one from China's Taiwan province, while two others are reportedly missing off the coast of Somalia.

More than ten ships had been hijacked off the coast of Somalia since this year.

The surge in piracy in the waters off the Somali coast, one of Africa's longest and one of the world's most dangerous, has sparked off global outcry with the United Nations calling for international action to combat Somalia's "plague of piracy," saying it threatened vital aid deliveries to some 1 million people.

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/6219711.html

[bleachedblack]

I am reading about several missing tankers lately...not clear if this one is missing as a result of bad weather or something else

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Crew and ship missing for three weeks
Anxiety over fate of ship after contact lost in Indian Ocean


Anxiety grows over the fate of 14 crewmembers of a multi-purpose cargo ship that disappeared almost three weeks ago in the Indian Ocean.

The REEF AZANIA, a 2583 dwt vessel built in 1985, was on her way from Dubai to the Seychelles and then Zanzibar with cargoes, but during what has been described as 'turbulence' in the Indian Ocean all contact with the vessel was lost.

The operators of the ship, Zambezi Shipping Agency, agents for the ship's owners, Reef Line, say they lost contact with the vessel after this, some 20 days since.

Although some press reports fear piracy, it is not thought she has been another victim.

The shipping agency say that all efforts are being made to trace the ship.

The St Vincent & Grenadines flagged vessel was formerly the AZANIA and before that COLMAR CASTOR, KRISTINE and STENHEIM

http://www.shippingtimes.co.uk/item766_reef.htm

[bleachedblack]

Piracy feared as South Korean Ship Missing Off Somalia

NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) -- A South Korean cargo ship is missing in pirate-infested waters off Somalia, an official said Friday, hours after the world's top maritime body urged the U.N. Security Council to help it end piracy in Somali waters.

If is confirmed that the Sea Prince was seized by pirates, it would bring to five the number of foreign vessels held off the Horn of Africa nation in some of the most dangerous waters in the world.

Andrew Mwangura, director of the Mombasa-based East African Seafarers Assistance Program, said the Sea Prince vanished after leaving Djibouti on May 11 carrying 2,400 tons of cereals for delivery in Berbera and Bosasso.

"She was expected to be in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, by this time to load another cargo," he told Reuters by telephone. "No one knows where they are."

It was not immediately clear how many crew members were on board, or from which countries. Mwangura said the ship was owned by a U.S. company and managed by a firm based in Ukraine.

Four ships are held by Somali pirates -- two from Tanzania, one from Denmark and one from Taiwan. The pirates killed one Taiwanese captive this month, apparently after the owners of his vessel refused to pay a ransom.

The latest suspected hijacking was feared to have occurred a day after the International Maritime Organization, an U.N. agency, said increasing attacks off Somalia this year were endangering vital aid shipments and commercial activity at sea.

The violence has mounted since a Somali Islamist movement that brought a semblance of law and order to the chaotic nation was toppled in January after a six-month rule.

Officials say there have been 15 ship hijackings and attempted attacks off Somalia so far this year, most of them since March.

There were 10 such incidents reported in 2006.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/06/29/somalia.ship.reut/

[mrs. red]

thanks for bringing that in here bleached....

interesting stuff... and scary... I have been to the Grenadines, OMgoodness it's one of the most fabulously beautiful places!   Very secluded and uninhabited islands in the area, so it's very possibe that would breed that kind of activity.

[bleachedblack]

Yacht with 9 on board missing

 05/12/2007
Wellington - New Zealand authorities began an air search on Wednesday for a large yacht with nine people on board overdue in the South Pacific, news reports said.

The 28-metre Alvei left Port Vila in the island state of Vanuatu more than three weeks ago and failed to arrive in New Zealand on Saturday as scheduled.

The Alvei is described as a training vessel that gives passengers the experience of travelling on an old sailing ship.

Those on board include Australians, Americans, a New Zealander and an Englishman between 27 and 66 years of age, the Newstalk ZB radio network reported

A spokesperson for the Rescue Co-ordination Centre, Mike Roberts, said the boat, which is believed to be equipped with communication facilities and a distress beacon, had not responded to radio broadcasts.

He said there was enough concern to warrant an aerial search and police were contacting family members of those on board.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2232948,00.html

[bleachedblack]

The Chilling Innocence of Piracy

Wednesday, 10.01.08
Somali pirates hijacked a Ukrainian vessel carrying tanks and other military hardware in the Gulf of Aden. U.S. Navy warships have surrounded them.

This year alone, pirates have attacked 61 ships in the region. They have held 14 oil tankers, cargo vessels, and other ships with a total of over 300 crew members, and have demanded ransoms of over $1 million per ship.

The word "pirate" summons all sorts of romantic images from the great age of piracy in the 17th century Caribbean: a ship flying the Jolly Roger and manned by cutthroats with black eyepatches and sashes around their heads. The Indian Ocean pirate of the early 21st century -- in his flip-flops, tank-top, and light jacket -- is different in some ways but similar in others. Only through the distance of time can we find anything charming or romantic about Caribbean pirates, who were murderous thugs just like their modern-day Indian Ocean counterparts.

Piracy is the maritime ripple effect of anarchy on land. Somalia is a failed state with a long coastline, so piracy flourishes nearby, as it does offshore from other weakly governed states like Indonesia and Nigeria. But it is particularly prevalent off the Somali coast because the anarchy is far more severe than in the other two countries. The Somali civil war began in the early 1990s, but the country had, in effect, been broken up since a decade earlier. I was in Somalia in 1986; there was essentially no government at that time, and the country was a virtual ward of the United Nations. Then, Somali pirates were often unemployed male youth who hung around the docks, and whom the local warlord dispatched to the seas to bring back income for him. Piracy is organized crime. Like roving gangs, each group of pirates patrols a part of the sea. The waters in the Gulf of Aden might as well be a street in Mogadishu.

I spoke recently with several U.S. Navy officers who had been involved in anti-piracy operations off Somalia, and who had interviewed captured pirates. The officers told me that Somali pirate confederations consist of cells of ten men, with each cell distributed among three skiffs. The skiffs are usually old, ratty, and roach-infested, and made of unpainted, decaying wood or fiberglass. A typical pirate cell goes into the open ocean for three weeks at a time, navigating by the stars. The pirates come equipped with drinking water, gasoline for their single-engine outboards, grappling hooks, short ladders, knives, AK-47 assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades. They bring millet and qat (the local narcotic of choice), and they use lines and nets to catch fish, which they eat raw. One captured pirate skiff held a hunk of shark meat so tough it had teeth marks all over it. With no shade and only a limited amount of water, their existence on the high seas is painfully rugged.

The classic tactic of Somali pirates is to take over a slightly larger dhow, often a fishing boat manned by Indians, Taiwanese, or South Koreans, and then live on it, with the skiff attached. Once in possession of a dhow, they can seize an even bigger ship. As they leapfrog to yet bigger ships, they let the smaller ships go free. Because the sea is vast, only when a large ship issues a distress call do foreign navies even know where to look for pirates. If Somali pirates hunted only small boats, no warship in the international coalition would know about the piracy.

Off-hand cruelty is the pirates' signature behavior. In one instance, they had beaten, bullied, and semi-starved an Indian merchant crew for a week, and thrown overboard a live monkey that the crew was transporting to Dubai. "Forget the Johnny Depp charm," one Navy officer told me. "Theirs is a savage brutality not born of malice or evil, like a lion killing an antelope. There is almost a natural innocence about what they do."

The one upside of piracy is that it creates incentives for cooperation among navies of countries who often have tense relations with each other. The U.S. and the Russians cooperate off the Gulf of Aden, and we might begin to work with the Chinese and other navies off the coast of Indonesia, too. As a transnational threat tied to anarchy, piracy brings nations together, helping to form the new coalitions of the 21st century.

http://thecurrent.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/pirates.php

[sharon]

Probably nothing -- but interesting in light of your previous posts


http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/712050.html

Posted on Fri, Oct. 03, 2008
Coast Guard probes 2 unmanned boats in ocean
BY ADAM H. BEASLEY
abeasley@MiamiHerald.com

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating two separate unmanned boats in the ocean off Broward County, although it was not immediately known if anyone fell in the water.

Contrary to some reports, it is not believed that either boat capsized.

One off the coast of Hallandale was semi-submerged; another 13 miles east of Fort Lauderdale was disabled and adrift, with no one aboard, said Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Johnson, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

No additional information was immediately available.