Pirates still infest oceans

Press, 11 October 1986, Page 20

Pirates still infest oceans

By

JOY ASCHENBACH,

National Geographic News Service

Lurking in many of the same haunts of old, pirates are a serious problem in the 1980 s. At least one act of piracy occurs

Aboard the Falcon Countess, both the captain and the crew believed their ship had cleared the danger zone in the pirateinfested Strait of Malacca, the busy trade route linking the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

Then the pirates appeared, armed with knives and bayonets. They swarmed aboard, bound the captain, and made off with $40,000 from the ship’s safe.

Off the west coast of Africa, pirates steal everything that is not nailed down, according to a German sea captain. In a South American port, a Danish captain was warned not to sleep in his cabin while at anchor because of the peril of pirates. These are not tales from the swashbuckling days of yore, when the likes of Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, and the Barbary priates roamed the seas. The Falcon Countess, a merchant vessel leased to the United States military, was attacked last year. "Pirate watches” are routinely posted on ships navigating the narrow straits of Malacca and Singapore; alert crews fight off today’s pirates by washing them overboard with fire hoses.

every day somewhere in the world.

That rate includes all forms of sea piracy, from the most, savage — the rape and murder of Vietnamese refugees fleeing across the Gulf of Thailand — to the seizing of yachts and other pleasure boats for drug-running in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

“Piracy is a phenomenon that comes and goes,” says Gerhard O. W. Mueller, professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University. “There have been 12 major eras of piracy since ancient Phoenician times. The current one started in the mid-19705, reached its crest in 1980-81, and has continued at that high level.”

“It’s not the Jolly Roger, eye-patch-and-parrot, high-seas piracy,” says Peter Kidman of the London-based International Maritime Bureau, set up in 1980 by the International Chamber of Commerce to monitor the growing wave of maritime fraud, which includes “paper-and-paint-brush” piracy as well as the more traditional type. But like earlier buccaneers, today’s pirates are often after loot that can be easily carried off

— jewellery, money, and personal valuables. They prowl poorly patrolled, often politically disputed waters off weak coastal countries. They frequently attack in seas dotted with islands that provide convenient hideouts. They come from astern in high-speed motorboats, usually at night. They throw grappling hooks over the stern, shinny up ropes, hold the crew at gunpoint, rob the safe and steal personal valuables, then disappear over the side.

This is typical when the target is a cargo ship or tanker, says Daniel J. Dzurek, a United States State Department geographer who has studied piracy worldwide. Piracy against commercial vessels is the most geographically widespread, occurring in the sea lanes of the Far East, off the west coast of Africa, in the eastern Mediterranean, and off the Brazilian coast of South America, he adds. In the first six months of 1985, the International Maritime Bureau received 28 reports of pirate attacks against commercial vessels, most from the Strait of Malacca and West Africa. “We know the majority of cases are not reported,” says Kidman, who also notes an upsurge in terror-

ism at sea, such as last year’s Achille Lauro takeover.

For a long time, Nigeria was one of the worst trouble spots; ships waiting to dock at Lagos were sitting ducks for pirates. A Nigerian Government crackdown that began in 1982 has helped cut the number of incidents dramatically. But Kidman adds: “The pirates simply moved along the coast to other countries,” such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and the Ivory Coast. There, pirates have taken everything, from champagne and perfume to infant formula and birth-control pills. Everywhere, electronic equipment is prized booty. “I have visions of pirates with Sony Walkmans,” says Dzurek.

Off West Africa and in the eastern Mediterranean, where countries such as Lebanon have little control of their ports, stolen cargo can be illegally unloaded with no questions asked. Cries of piracy sometimes disguise maritime fraud.

In some cases of “paper piracy,” the ship totally disappears, says Robert C. Ritchie, a history professor at the University of California, San Diego. “A shipment of oil, for example, may be taken to an

illegal port in South Africa, loaded off and sold there, the ship taken out to sea and sunk, and the insurance money collected.”

-In other cases, ships reported lost at sea have been diverted to clandestine ports, unloaded, and repainted — reappearing under a new name and a new flag. By far the most brutal and bloody acts of piracy are against Vietnamese boat peole fleeing to Thailand and Malaysia. Pirates, most of them Thai fishermen, killed 388 people, abducted 587, and raped 734 women, from 1982 through 1985, the United Nations reports. Another 967 people have been reported missing and are presumed dead. These violent attacks occurred even after the start of an antipiracy programme in 1982 by the Thai Government, with the support of the United Nations and a dozen member nations. Before, more than half of all refugee boats were attacked; now, about 30 per cent are. In the Caribbean, where seven-teenth-century pirates attacked rich Spanish galleons, the target today is usually the boat itself, not its cargo. "Narco pirates” seize pleasure craft and convert them into drug-smuggling vessels. But this is happening less often, Dzurek says, as more such pirates take to the skies.