Pirates have been causing trouble ever since men first went down to the sea in ships, or at least since the 14th century B.C., when Egyptian records mention Lukkan pirates raiding Cyprus. Soon after, the Churchill headed for the dhow. Churchill, a Navy guided-missile destroyer on patrol about 100 nautical miles from the pirates' last reported position. The duty officer's next message went to the USS Winston S. The center's duty officer immediately radioed an alert to all ships in the Delta Ranger's vicinity and found that two other cargo ships had escaped similar attacks in recent days. In describing the attack, he added that the pirates seemed to be using a hijacked Indian dhow, a fishing vessel, as their mother ship. The captain radioed a message to distant Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) operates the world's only pirate reporting and rescue center. Moments later, bullets tore into the bridge, and vapor trails from rocket-propelled grenades streaked across the bow: pirates.Ī member of the Delta Ranger's crew sounded the ship's whistle, and the cargo ship began maneuvering away as bullets thudded into its hull. A crewman on the bridge spied two speedboats zooming straight at the port side of his vessel. The Delta Ranger, a cargo ship carrying bauxite, was steaming through the ink-blue Indian Ocean in January 2006, about 200 nautical miles off Somalia's coast. Smithsonian revisits its August 2007 article on the challenges facing those who are trying to bring an end to the piracy in the Indian Ocean. Editor's Note - April 9, 2009: In the first capture of an American crew in over 100 years, Somali pirates took hostage the captain of the ship Maersk Alabama after an aborted attempt to seize the cargo on board.
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