The owners of the Biscaglia, a Liberian-flagged chemical tanker, paid thousands of dollars for three guards to protect it from Somali pirates.
It didn’t work. Brigands struck on Nov. 28, seizing the 27,350-ton vessel and its crew of 25 Indians as it headed toward the Suez Canal. After failing to repulse the pirates with deafening sonic devices, the unarmed guards jumped ship to escape and were plucked from the Gulf of Aden by a German navy helicopter.
“We responded as quickly as we could, but it was all over,” said Christophe Prazuck, a spokesman for the French military, which also sent a chopper. “It does make you wonder about the utility of some of these security teams.”
Piracy off Somalia’s coast has created a flourishing market for security companies that promise to protect ships from speedboat-borne brigands armed with AK-47 assault rifles and grenade-launchers. Hired by shippers facing increased costs for insurance, alternative routes and ransoms, the guards are prompting concern that they will provoke violence because some carry weapons.
“There are about a dozen companies providing security teams and many others trying to jump on the bandwagon,” said Giles Noakes, head of maritime security at BIMCO, the world’s largest ship-owners’ association. “While I understand the temptation, placing armed guards on board creates a severe risk of escalation.”
Increased Piracy
Pirates have attacked about 125 ships this year off Somalia’s east coast and in the Gulf of Aden sailing to and from Egypt’s Suez Canal, a route used by 20,000 ships a year carrying a 10th of world trade. About 45 were seized. There were 37 reported attacks in 2007, the French government said.
The attacks have prompted the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S., India, Russia and France to dispatch about 15 warships to the pirate-infested area, which is three times the size of Texas.
Yet piracy has continued unabated, in part because it would take 300 warships to control every ship movement in the 772,200- square-mile area, Prazuck said.
On Dec. 16, the same day the United Nations Security Council adopted a motion allowing land and air operations against pirates, brigands attacked four ships in the Gulf of Aden. Among them was a Chinese vessel, and China said it also may deploy warships to the area.
Now some shippers are paying tens of thousands of dollars a day for protection.
Converted Gunboat
Blackwater Worldwide offers the McArthur, a former research vessel that the Moyock, North Carolina, company converted into a gunboat. More than 70 shipping and insurance companies have inquired about it, said Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell. It can carry up to 30 armed personnel and is currently berthed in Virginia Beach.
Secopex, based in Carcassone, France, offers 11 escort boats carrying former French naval commandos. The largest, with a dozen personnel, rent for $30,000 a day. The company has had inquiries from Japanese, Dutch and Danish shippers, said Julien Duval, head of maritime security at Secopex.
The Biscaglia’s one Irish and two British guards worked for APMSS, a Dorset, England, company that uses high-volume sonic systems to repulse boarding attempts. APMSS said in a statement that its crews have prevented three hijackings recently. Nick Davis, the firm’s founder, didn’t respond to e-mails requesting an interview.
$3,385 a Day
According to its Web site, APMSS charges 2,335 pounds ($3,385) a day for three guards and sonic equipment, plus 4,500 pounds for each guard to travel to the zone. They spend three to five days on board, between Port Said at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal and either Aden, Yemen, or Salalah, Oman.
As the Biscaglia attack was under way, its distress signal was picked up by the Nivose, a French frigate escorting 18 merchant ships 40 miles away. When a Panther helicopter from the Nivose arrived 15 minutes later, the pirates were already in control, Prazuck said.
The guards, rescued by the German chopper, were taken first to a French warship and then to HMS Cumberland, a British frigate. The Biscaglia’s owner — Industrial Shipping Enterprises Corp. of Stamford, Connecticut — didn’t return calls for comment.
The day before that incident, a 19-man team from London- based Hart Security Ltd. thwarted an attack on a European vessel, said Hugh Martin, Hart’s general manager.
Repulsing Pirates
That team repulsed 11 pirate speedboats over three hours with sonic devices and fire hoses after ringing the ship’s perimeter with fencing, Martin said. The team’s members were armed but didn’t use their weapons, he said. Hart charges $40,000 for a 12-man team to protect a single trip through the Gulf of Aden, the company said. Bigger teams cost as much as $200,000.
Shipping associations urge vessel owners to rely on the area’s warships for protection and to opt for non-lethal methods if they want extra security.
“Now, the pirates fire their AK-47s in the air to scare,” said Anne-Sophie Ave, director of Armateurs de France, a French ship-owners’ group. “If they think there are security teams on board, they’ll fire to kill.”
That’s a “valid point,” said Hart’s Martin, “because a lot of inexperienced cowboys have tried to muscle in” on the business. “But some boats are vulnerable or too slow to keep up with naval escorts,” he added. “We’ve escorted 100 ships the past three years, and not one has been taken.”
Armed Guards
The U.S. advises ships to employ guards, even armed ones, said Lieutenant Nate Christensen, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
“Shipping companies have to understand that naval forces cannot be everywhere,” said U.S. Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, commander of naval forces supporting coalition military operations in Afghanistan, in a Nov. 17 statement. “Self- protection measures are the best way to protect their vessels, their crews, and their cargo. Ships should use security teams.”
In addition to increasing the possibility of violence, armed guards on ships carry legal risks, said John Kimball, a maritime law expert at Blank Rome in New York.
A warship from any sovereign nation has the right under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to kill pirates in international waters. But “when a private security firm does it, you are in a gray area,” he said. “Putting a security force on a ship raises all sorts of issues I think that ship-owners should want to avoid.”
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