Two pirates drowned that night as they tried to escape from the superior numbers of the crew. But when push comes to shove, all you want to do is constrain them or subdue them." Sometimes there's this bravado about attacking pirates. "No one wants to get into the conflict, I have to admit. "Nobody went to sleep that night," he said. His 19-man crew armed itself with crowbars, mustered on deck and got ready for a nasty hand-to-hand fight. David Watkins, a former ship's master who now works as fleet quality assurance manager for Swire Group's China Navigation unit, tells a story of being awakened by a crewmate in the middle of the night who said that nine pirates wielding ropes, grappling hooks and machetes were swarming up over the stern of his crude carrier as it sailed through the strait close enough to see the nighttime lights of Singapore in the distance. But that doesn't mean that hair-raising confrontations with a high possibility of violence don't occur from time to time.Ĭapt. Maritime bandits in south Asia prefer stealth, and they make money by selling what they steal, not by ransoming seafarers. And while it's impossible to quantify exactly how much more Americans pay for regular consumer goods as a result of piracy and higher shipping costs, it's worth considering that more than 90 percent of the world's trade is carried by sea, according the United Nations' International Maritime Organization.Īs the example of the Ai Maru shows, pirates in the Strait of Malacca and Singapore Strait prefer tactics that are very different from the chasing, seizing and kidnapping that were employed in the past by Somali pirates on the Maersk Alabama and hundreds of other targets. Those extra costs inevitably get passed on to consumers in the increasingly interconnected global markets, where losses in one part of the world affect costs in another. (Pirates prefer their targets "low and slow," in the parlance of the shipping trade.) Jon Helmick, a captain with the United States Merchant Marine Academy, overseen by the Maritime Administration at the Department of Transportation, said that cruising at 17.9 knots in a supertanker, versus the typical 12.8 knots, adds an extra $88,000 in fuel expense per ship per day. Even cruising faster in an effort to discourage pirates adds costs. Those higher costs come in the form of lost cargo, higher insurance, added shipping times, extra compensation to crews, litigation and legal fees. Half of the world's attacks now take place in the waters off Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. Merchant Marine estimates that global piracy costs shippers $4.9 billion to $8.3 billion a year. Only a minority of attacks are reported, experts contend, since handing over such information is voluntary, and many shippers don't want their names associated with lost cargoes or a perception of lax security.īut the costs of piracy extend far beyond the actual vessels that are attacked. Instead, experts say, they're highly organized criminal enterprises that gather intelligence, coordinate attacks, work in discrete teams, sometimes have their own tankers and then sell what they steal to big, pre-arranged buyers.Īnd even those estimates from Asia are conservative. And they're often not small-time, ad hoc gangs from coastal villages like the Somali crews. They're in the business of stealing cargoes of liquid fuel. Unlike the Somali pirates-who, incidentally, are now almost out of business-the pirates of southern Asia rarely, if ever, seize hostages. ![]() The attack on the Ai Maru, which was documented by ReCAAP, a multinational body that combats piracy, and the International Chamber of Commerce's International Maritime Bureau (IMB), is a textbook example of the piracy plaguing the seas of the Singapore Strait and Strait of Malacca-the world's busiest commercial waterway. Welcome to the world's most dangerous waters, where a whole new style of piracy is rewriting the playbook of maritime crime. Their total haul, at black market fuel prices, came in at about $550,000. At 5 a.m., when naval and coast guard vessels arrived at the Ai Maru, dead in the water with its lights glowing, the pirates were long gone.
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