And the Plot Thickens...Crew Retakes the Ship?

From the New York Times

Pirates commandeered a United States-flagged container ship with 20 American crew members off the coast of Somalia on Wednesday, in what appeared to be the first time an American-crewed ship was seized by pirates in the area.

The Pentagon said the crew of the ship was believed to have retaken the vessel, The Associated Press reported, though the owner of the ship said it could not confirm that the crew was back in control.

The container ship, the Maersk Alabama, was carrying thousands of tons of relief aid to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, the company that owns the ship said.

The ship was taken by pirates at about 7:30 a.m. local time, 280 miles southeast of the Somali city of Eyl, a known haven for pirates, a spokesman for the United States Navy said. The ship is owned and operated by Maersk Line Limited, a United States subsidiary of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, the Danish shipping giant.

The Maersk Alabama was at least the sixth commercial ship commandeered by pirates in the last week off the Horn of Africa, one of the most notoriously lawless zones on the high seas, where pirates have been operating with near impunity despite efforts by many nations, including the United States, to intimidate them with naval warship patrols.

There was no additional information immediately available about the crew, the company said in a statement.

“Our initial concern is to ensure proper support of the crew and assistance to their families,” the Maersk statement said.

The Cape Cod Times reported on its Web site Wednesday that the chief officer and captain of the vessel are both graduates of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Capt. Richard Phillips of Underhill, Vermont, is a 1979 graduate of the maritime academy, and Capt. Shane Murphy, 34, the chief officer graduated in 2001, according to Mr. Murphy’s father, a professor at the academy.

While Maersk Line Limited, based in Norfolk, Virginia, is one of the Department of Defense’s primary shipping contractors, it was not under contract with the Defense Department at the time of its hijacking, said Lt. Stephanie Murdock, a spokeswoman with the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.

The 508-foot long ship was carrying food and other agricultural materials for the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, among other clients, but the company did not specify who the other clients were. It was on a regular rotation through the Indian Ocean from Salalah, a city in southwestern Oman, to Djibouti, and then on to Mombasa, according to the company’s headquarters in Denmark. The final destination of the ship’s cargo was unclear.

The ship, built in Taiwan in 1998, was less than half full, carrying some 400 20-foot containers of cargo such as vegetable oil and bulgur wheat. It can carry over 1,000 such containers, and was deployed in Maersk Line’s East Africa service network, the company said.

There have been more than 50 pirate attacks this year off of the Somali coast, with the bulk of the attacks occurring in the Gulf of Aden, which separates the Arabian peninsula from the Horn of Africa. Sixteen ships with more than 200 crew remain in pirate custody, most of them docked a few miles off the Somali coast while ransom negotiations with the ship owners take place, said Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman with the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

About 15 international naval vessels, including three American Navy ships, now patrol the pirate-infested waters, many under an American-led task force created to combat piracy.

At the time of the attack on the Maersk Alabama, the closest patrol vessel was some 300 nautical miles away, the Navy said. Most of the patrol vessels are concentrated in the Gulf of Aden, and as a result, the pirates have expanded their reach into the open seas. The Navy would not comment on whether its patrol boats were now following the hijacked vessel.

“It’s that old saying: Where the cops aren’t, the criminals are going to go,” Lieutenant Christensen said. “We patrol an area of more than one million square miles. The simple fact of the matter is that we can’t be everywhere at one time.”

Piracy has become a multi-million dollar business in Somalia, a nation that has limped along since 1991 without a functioning central government. A captured Ukrainian arms freighter hijacked off Somalia’s coast in 2008, for example, was released in February when its owners paid $3.2 million in cash, dropped by parachute.

Armed with automatic weapons, the pirates often attack the large merchant ships from small speed boats, then scale the towering ship hulls with hooks and ropes and overtake the merchant crews, which are generally unarmed.

To extend their reach from shore, the pirates have begun operating from floating outposts known as “mother ships” — often captured fishing trawlers that can serve as bases for the smaller speedboats as they lie in wait. The crews are generally not harmed by the pirates.

Lieutenant Christensen said he “could not recall” another episode involving the capture of an American ship by Somali pirates. Noel Choong, head of the Piracy Reporting Center at the International Maritime Bureau, in Kuala Lumpur, said that no such occurrences had been reported “for the past three or four years — at least.”

“There are no reports that any of the crew is injured,” Mr. Choong said. “Normally, the pirates would treat the crew well.”

“The Somali pirates are now actually venturing very far out from the coast,” Mr. Choong said, “up to 500 nautical miles.”

The ship has carried a United States flag — meaning it is registered in the United States — since 2004, when it came under contract with the United States Maritime Security Program, which is run by the Maritime Administration, an agency within the United States Department of Transportation, according to a press release issued by Maersk Line Limited. The designation allows the ship to contract with American government agencies and carry sensitive American cargo.

The 17,000-ton ship has sailed out of Dubai since November 2004, the press release said.

Also be sure to check out the article from the BBC, Hijacked US crew 'retake vessel'.