While much of the world is preparing for Talk Like a Pirate Day on Sunday, Sept. 19, the Gulf of Aden was the stage for real pirate drama this week. A band of Somali pirates boarded and seized a German freighter, the Magellan Star,
Looking around, the pirates at first could not find the crew, but they did find the phone number for the ship owner in Germany. The Times of London has a news service report on what happened next:
A man speaking broken English demanded fiercely, “Where is the crew here. Why is the engine not working?”
It is now standard “passive-defence” practice off the Somali coast when ships are attacked to shut down all machinery and hide the crew in a fortified space, city shipping operators say.
A placard on the bridge of the Magellan Star displays the owners’ phone number in case of emergency. The pirates rang the number.
A quick-witted staffer at the shipping company lied to the pirates, “They all went on holiday. And the engine is broken down.”
American Marines in the area quickly responded. The Marines on the USS Dubuque from the Fifth Fleet stormed the freighter, freed the crew and took the pirates as prisoners. No one was injured.
As Tony Perry of the Los Angeles Times wrote on the L.A. Now blog, the pirates who attacked the freighter in the Gulf of Aden came from another pirate ship, a ship that is still on the prowl:
The pirates had apparently been abandoned by members of their "mother ship." That vessel had launched a skiff with the pirates aboard on Wednesday in the attack on the freighter.
But as two U.S. ships and a Turkish frigate responded to a distress call from the freighter, the larger pirate vessel fled.
Those marines and others patrolling the Gulf of Aden may not need a pirate glossary to understand the events in their home away from home. On Sept. 19, though, everyone will want to enjoy a good round of "ahoy" and "avast" and even an eyebrow-raising "R-r-r-r-r-r-r, Matey!"
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