How do you hide an elephant?

The Maltese-flagged, Finnish-chartered ship that reported being attacked by pirates in the Baltic sea on July 24 has apparently disappeared. The Arctic Sea, a cargo ship carrying 6,500 tons of timber, was supposed to have reached Algeria on August 4 and was last spotted on July 30 when it passed through the Bay of Biscay, but the Portuguese naval commander states that, "We can guarantee that the ship is not in Portuguese waters nor did it ever pass through Portuguese waters." This bizarre occurrence has sparked confused debate about whether or not the ship could have fallen victim to a pirate attack. Some maritime experts are hesitant about attributing the disappearance to pirates, suggesting a commercial dispute instead. From today's AP article:

"There have been no attacks in European waters," said Pottengal Mukundan, director of the London-based International Maritime Bureau. "It's not the kind of area where pirates would find it easy to operate." Nick Davis, the chief executive of the Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre, told the BBC that if anything had happened to the ship, cargo would have been found. "I strongly suspect that this is probably a commercial dispute with its owner and a third party and they've decided to take matters into their own hands," he said Wednesday.

Other maritime security experts have labeled this scenario "a new type of piracy" and have expressed amazement at the disappearance of a 4,000 tonne ship in the world's best-traveled shipping route:

Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, managing director of Dryad Maritime, an intelligence company specialising in piracy, said that if the ship may have been the victim of a new kind of piracy.

“If this is a criminal act, it appears to be following a new business model. It seems likely that the vessel will head to the west coast of Africa,” he said.

Mark Dickinson, general secretary of seafarers’ union Nautilus International, said: “It is alarming that, in the 21st century, a ship can apparently be commandeered by hijackers and sail through the world’s busiest waterway with no alarm being raised and no naval vessel going to intercept it.

“It is unbelievable that a ship can sail around for more than a fortnight with no one seemingly knowing its precise location or who is in control.”

The International Maritime Bureau, for its incredulous part, has not classified the incident as piracy: "We are not going to classify this as a piracy event, mainly because of the location and circumstance," he [Jeremy Harrison of the British Chamber of Shipping] said. The bureau is unaware of any piracy in recent memory in the waters off Sweden," spokesman Cyrus Mody said.

The Russian navy has joined in the hunt for the ship, and its warships and nuclear submarines have have been told to “take all necessary measures to find and free” the ship and its 15-man Russian crew. According to CNN, Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the Russian Maritime Bulletin Web site said he believed the vessel was carrying "some kind of secret cargo" which made it attractive to potential hijackers. The crew's account of the July 24 attack suggests a drug connection, a possibility the Telegraph has speculated about.

The New York Times reports that Maltese officials believe the ship to be headed out into the Atlantic.