Ghost ship #312

A few days ago, a gang of pirates from Somalia captured the Sirius Star, a ship the size of an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. The Sirius Star is a Saudi supertanker carrying about $100 million worth of oil. The pirates took the crew hostage and sailed the ship 400 miles to a desolate region of the central Somali coast, near the village of Harardhere, a village so small it is said that the entire town could fit on the bridge of the Sirius Star. The tanker sits anchored offshore while ransom negotiations proceed. So far this year, Somali pirates have captured almost 100 ships in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean and ransomed them for an average of $1 million each.

The ship in this picture is not the Sirius Star, though its location is very near (probably within 10 miles or so) where the pirates are said to have anchored the tanker. The ship seen here is an unremarkable cargo vessel, roughly the size of a World War II liberty ship. It is believed to have run aground and broken up--damage is visible at the stern--some years ago. In the Google Earth catalog of some 1800 shipwrecks visible from space, this is #312, with no details available concerning the vessel or its fate.

At the moment, the pirates of Somalia are said to have possession of 14 vessels, with more than 300 crew members held hostage. Unlike pirates of old, these brigands are not at all interested in the cargo of the various vessels they capture--for one thing, they have no facilities to offload oil or much of anything else in their remote villages. They do have money-counting machines, however, for they deal only in cash ransom--Somalia has no functioning banking system. Shipowners sometimes deliver the ransom in waterproof suitcases dropped from helicopters. The impact of so much cash in the pirate villages is said to be dramatic: new stone houses have been built, Toyota Land Cruisers have appeared, and enterprising merchants, even western-style caterers, have become wealthy providing goods and services to the pirates and their captives. In the nightmare that is latter-day Somalia, life among the pirates can seem sweet. "Our children are not worried about food now," a Harardhere mother told Western journalists. "They go to Islamic schools in the morning, and in the afternoon they play soccer."

The ransom demands are not particularly burdensome to the Saudi princes negotiating for release of the Sirius Star, but overall the wave of piracy is devastating to worldwide shipping. More than 40,000 vessels a year pass through pirate-infested waters south of the Suez Canal, and many insurance companies are now refusing to insure them. Some shipowners choose to avoid the danger by rerouting trade all the way around the continent of Africa, a much longer and more costly route. Shippers fear that steering clear of the Somali coast won't keep vessels safe for long; the new speedboats and weapons that the pirates have been buying with their ransom money permit them to venture hundreds of miles out to sea in search of prey.

Two hundred years ago, in the early years of the American republic, North African pirates claimed an annual tribute of $2 million for American ships to sail in the Mediterranean. The fledgling U.S. Navy went after these Barbary pirates, and the brand new U.S. Marine Corps mounted an expedition to the pirate stronghold of Tripoli. Actually, only one officer and seven enlisted Marines participated in that expedition, but this fact became legend and the legend became song, part of the first line of the Marine Corps hymn.