9th February 2011 - There be Pirates

I guess World geography was never my strong point, but I had missed the fact that between Somalia and India there is only Indian Ocean! The news stories for the last few weeks has been the increasing number of attacks just off the West Indian coast. Any romantic, Jack Sparrow, idea of swashbuckling pirates goes out the window when you read that they are just a bunch of Somali Bandits riding around in speedboats armed with AK47s. What does surprise me is how these guys manage to hijack huge oil tankers? Fishing boats, yes but an oil tanker carrying 200 million dollars worth of crude oil is not going to be a small ship so how do they stop them and how do they board? Reason for mentioning this in the blog? In the latest story, the pirates tried to hijack a ship off the Lakshadweep Islands off south west India, the ship managed to evade capture so the pirates gave up and looked for another target. The target they selected turned out to be an Indian Navy ship out looking for pirates - all 28 pirates arrested and face trial in Mumbai!