Piracy off the Horn of Africa. Good News.

[John Albert Evans]

I read an aticle today by Frederick Fosyth in the newspaper regarding piracy by Somalian Pirates off the Horn of Africa. It reads that acts of piracy are now almost down to nil after the international warships were found to be inadequate, by either being too long in getting to the scene or being unable to do anything when they got there due to the rules of law being used against them.
Quietly and without any fuss or media publicity, they began to hire a couple of marksmen with high powered sniper weapons for the stretch between Djibouti and Mombassa.The pirates aluminium skiffs were no match for a Barret Light-50 round (About the size of your forfinger) and who wants to sink about 300 miles off shore in those waters. (Think sharks)
After a few watery examples the Somalian pirates got the message. That sort of piracy there is now history.
BUT it has moved to the waters off Lagos Nigeria.

John Albert Evans.

[John Pruden]

nato could still have had the likes of illustrious as a floating platform of the coast fighters could cover vast areas within minutes to counter pirates for less cost of dozens of warships tied up in the fight against piracy ? just my view the only good pirate is fish food..jp

[Lewis McColl]

Funny the Russians never had any bother, they had a tanker taken a few years ago, it was back under Russian control within 24 hours I believe.
Having been sailing in those waters with NGSCO on LNG gas tankers up until I retired in Jan 2013, if they have actually got it under control that is very good news. I will lay money on it though they WILL be back.
NGSCO like a lot of companies messed around with putting in place a Citadel. We regularily had piracy drills. We also started to carry security guards. These were ex South African army, what they were actually supposed to do I will never know as they were unarmed. I think the plan was we would hide and the guards would shout go away you nasty pirates.
There was another part of the same company ADNATCO, who did have a ship taken just off Aden, the Pirates did cause a lot of damage to that ship trying to set the ship on fire etc! Rules are if all the crew are safe and accounted for in the Citadel security forces will retake the vessel, if a crew member is being held hostage they will not attempt to board.
How is this though for discrimination, ADNATCO, adopted a policy that if a ship was to be travelling in known piracy areas and a UAE citizen was onboard the said Citizen could if they wanted to be relieved by a Non UAE officer. The same rule did not apply to any other crew member.