“Money, money, money,” the seven armed and masked pirates shouted as
they boarded the ship anchored off the coast of Macapa, Brazil. Seizing control of the ship’s crew, the men began gathering camera equipment, an outboard motor, about $600, and personal affects such as jewelry and watches.
Trying to reverse the situation, the ship’s captain grabbed and fired a rifle, hitting one of the intruders in the hand. The injured pirate fired back, killing the captain after the bullet pierced his lung and heart. In the ensuing melee, a crew member was shot in the back, while another suffered injuries from a blow to the face.
Notorious Incident in Brazil. This incident, which occurred on Dec. 7, 2001, was one of the most notorious examples of modern piracy in South America. It drew coverage from the New York Times and CNN because the ship’s captain was former America’s Cup winner Sir Peter Blake of New Zealand.
Blake’s vessel, the Seamaster, was anchored about 800 feet offshore when it was boarded and attacked only hours after dropping its anchor. The Seamaster was in Brazil as part of a round-the-world expedition to focus the world’s attention on the planet’s water resources. It had sailed through some of the most remote regions of the Amazon without incident.
The seven men who allegedly boarded the boat were arrested a few days later.
Not an Isolated Event. Unfortunately, the pirate attack on the Seamaster was not an isolated event. There were nine pirate attacks off the coast of South America or the Caribbean in 2008, according to the International Chamber of Commerce. Both pleasure and commercial vessels were attacked by pirates in the region.
In one pirate attack on a sailboat off Venezuela’s coast last year a U.S. citizen was shot and killed, the Web site YachtPals reported.
There were no attacks off the coast of Mexico or Central America in the last two years, according to the ICC’s statistics.
About 10 to 12 pirate attacks per year have been reported in the South American region since 2005. This number relatively low compared to other regions of the world such as Africa or south east Asia, in which scores of pirate attacks are reported each year.
More Attacks in Africa, South East Asia. The areas of the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, accounted for roughly 37 percent of all attacks reported in 2008 (111 out of 293), according to the Feb. 9 congressional testimony of the RAND Corporation‘s Peter Chalk. Prior to 2008, most pirate attacks occurred off the coast of Indonesia, he testified.
Almost 2,000 incidents of piracy in the world have been reported between 2003 and 2008, Chalk said. Fueling modern piracy, Chalk testified, are the following factors:
- lax coastal and port-side security, which is particularly evident in Brazil;
- an enormous amount of commercial freight at sea combined with the necessity to pass through congested ambush prone check points such as the Panama Canal or Suez Canal;
- commercial shipping companies’ use of “skeleton crews” as a cost-cutting measure and an outgrowth of advanced technology;
- government corruption has encouraged official complicity in pirate rings;
- the willingness of shipowners to pay large ransoms for the return of their ship, crew, and cargo;
- the global proliferation of guns and other weapons has allowed pirates to operate at a more sophisticated and destructive level; and
- after responding to high-profile land-based terrorist attacks, governments have few resources to devote to protecting against maritime threats.
But there is more at stake than monetary losses resulting from paying ransoms for ships, cargo, or crew. Piracy could potentially trigger a major environmental catastrophe.
A nightmare scenario would be if pirates were to capture an oil tanker and allow it to drift into a congested sea lane. A collision with another ship could cause an oil spill in some of the world’s most environmentally sensitive areas.
Piracy is a chronic problem that governments need to address on land and at sea. While taking the necessary measures to deter pirates is costly, the price is far less than the toll that an environmental disaster would exact.
Photo by Jan Tik (Via Creative Commons)
Thank you to the Inside Mexico online magazine and A Canuk in Cancun for the shout out about travelojos.
on Apr 13th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Interesting. The numbers you describe are actually much lower than I had thought. I was under the impression, apparently exaggerated, that taking a private yacht into some regions of the Caribbean in particular was quite dangerous because drug smugglers commonly seize them and put them to use. But these numbers make me think you’re far more likely to be attacked on shore than at sea.
on Dec 11th, 2009 at 11:53 am
actually the likeliness of an environmental disasters due to piracy is highly unlikely. a more concerning issue, is the future relationship of piracy and terrorism.