Boy, thats a pretty heavy charge, and I wonder what the Royal Navy has to say about this? Thanks to David for sending me this one by the way, and we will see if there is any kind of a backlash from the public on this. Especially if the pirates execute the Chandlers because the ransom was not paid.
On a side note, the tactics and strategy that the pirates used in this particular case is interesting. They captured one boat, used that as the new mother ship, and went after other vessels in the process. This could potentially be expanded to be even more profitable, because they are able to stay out longer, cruise around as if a harmless merchant vessel, and collect any number of boats in the process. If unknowing vessels are traveling near a recently captured vessel, how are they to know if pirates are on board? So it is absolutely feasible that pirates could use these boats as ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ in order to grab even more sheep. In the history of naval warfare and piracy, this is nothing new, but we must recognize the tactics and strategies and constantly re-evaluate our own strategies and tactics to deal with this. –Matt
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How the Royal Navy Stood and Watched as Pirates Snatched British Yacht Couple
BY RICHARD PENDLEBURY
November 20, 2009
MID-OCEAN, a degree or two shy of the equator, two ships are steaming south, apparently in convoy.
One is a Singaporean flagged container vessel of 25,000 tonnes, the Kota Wajar. The other is a British military tanker, flying the blue ensign of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service. Neither was built for battle. Nor in normal circumstances would they be foes.
But a whiff of gunpowder is palpably in the air. Aboard the tanker, RFA Wave Knight, Royal Navy gun crews have closed up for action, their 30mm cannon and machine guns primed and ready.
A few hundred yards away on the Kota Wajar, Somali pirates, who had recently hijacked the vessel, possess a variety of small arms including rocket-propelled grenades.
These are high stakes, indeed, because both ships are on course to rendezvous with a British yacht drifting helplessly in the Indian Ocean.
Aboard this 38ft yacht, and held at gunpoint by a pirate advance party, are Paul and Rachel Chandler, a retired couple from Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
The Kota Wajar, in its new role as a pirate ‘mother ship’, is to scoop them up and carry them back to captivity and a multi-million-pound ransom in Somalia more than 200 miles to the north-west.
A burst of gunfire from the Wave Knight cuts across the bow of the hijacked container vessel in the first overtly aggressive act of the chase.
Surely the Chandlers will be plucked to safety?
What happened next has been described as ‘depressing’ and ‘ shameful’. And ‘hardly in the tradition of Nelson’ — which is something of an understatement.
Not that any of us would have known about it if a sailor aboard the Wave Knight had not blown the official Ministry of Defence version of events out of the water.
That original MoD briefing had deliberately created the impression that the meeting between Wave Knight and Kota Wajar never happened.
Indeed, MoD spokesmen suggested that Wave Knight had simply come across the yacht empty and adrift on the High Seas; the Chandlers had already been taken hostage and had been whisked away before British forces arrived on the scene to answer their distress signal.
This was very definitely not the case. The Wave Knight, it seems, might even have been as close as 50ft to the Chandlers as they were taken aboard the Kota Wajar and off to Africa, under the apparently helpless gaze of 100 Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary sailors.
The Navy’s ignominy over the incident has parallels with the infamous 2007 incident when 15 armed Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines on small boat patrol in the Shatt al-Arab waterway near Basra were taken prisoner by Iranian seaborne forces without a shot being fired.
The personnel were kept for 12 days and paraded for the world’s media, reducing what was once the finest fighting force in the world to a laughing stock.
After they were freed, one sailor confessed that he had cried himself to sleep when the Iranians took his iPod.
As more facts come to light about the capture of the Chandlers — and they do so slowly, as the MoD still refuses to confirm what really happened — awkward questions about tactics against pirates in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean have to be asked. Military personnel in the region feel that ‘their hands are tied’ by policies that prevent them from prosecuting a more aggressive campaign against the buccaneers, because of the latter’s ‘human rights’.
As British maritime security expert and former Royal Marine David Pickard of the risk mitigation firm Drum Cussac remarks: ‘There has been quite a change in British Rules of Engagement since the time of Henry VIII.
‘In his day, the law demanded the summary execution of all pirates. Recently the Home Office has been more concerned that pirates captured off Somalia would simply claim political asylum in the UK.’
The belief is that, once in Royal Navy custody, the pirates would claim it a breach of their rights to send them back to the anarchy in Somalia.
Since 1991, the country has been a failed state and local criminals are able to use the long Somali coastline as a safe base for pirate operations, hijacking passing vessels which, along with their crews, are then held for ransom.
As the Gulf of Aden is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, the pickings are rich. The international community had to act. United Nations resolutions were passed.
But this international anti-piracy operation is fragmented and incoherent. At various times, Royal Navy ships in the area have been under the command of Nato, the EU and a third, multi-national organisation called Combined Maritime Forces Task Force 151.
Each body has its own ‘subtly different’ Rules of Engagement for dealing with pirates. But it is understood that in all cases, British forces are not supposed to open fire on pirates unless in self-defence or when the lives of others are in immediate danger.
And so, unless pirates open fire first — as they did last year on Royal Marines from HMS Cumberland, with fatal consequences to themselves — the Navy cannot engage in battle.
Nor can pirates be arrested unless caught in the act of taking a ship. In June, units from HMS Portland intercepted two boats full of armed Somalis, obviously on a piratical mission.
But the Rules of Engagement meant that the British sailors could only throw the pirates’ weapons overboard and sink their faster boat. The Somalis were then given enough fuel to return to the mainland in the remaining boat — scot free.
And so, in the absence of any effective deterrence, the attacks continue — as the Chandlers found to their cost.
The first step that would lead to the Chandlers’ ordeal took place in the early hours of October 15, when the Kota Wajar, sailing from Shanghai to Kenya, was seized in the Gulf of Aden 150 miles off Somalia.
The 24,000-tonne container vessel and its 21 crew were taken to the notorious Somali pirate port of Haradheere.
It was just a week later, on October 22, that the Chandlers set off on their yacht from the Seychelles for Tanzania, 1,000 miles and possibly ten days sailing away.
In the early hours of October 23, while the Chandlers were sleeping,
Story here.