27 October 2016
All At Sea
For those in peril…
by Neil Tidmarsh
This week, twenty-six merchant seamen were released after nearly five years in captivity. Their ship, Nahan 3, was seized near the Seychelles in 2012 by Somali pirates wielding Kalashnikovs and grappling hooks (note that the Seychelles are getting on for 1000 miles from Somalia). One of the crew was killed during the attack. The surviving sailors (from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam) were held in terrible conditions (two of them died of disease), first on board the ship and then, when it sank off the Somali coast after a year, on shore. A ransom of $1.5 million was paid for their freedom, according to a negotiator for the Somalis. They are the last of the many seamen kidnapped and held hostage during the Somali pirate crisis of 2005-12 to be released.
The crisis dominated the news during those years. Somali pirates spread terror across the Indian Ocean and dismay among shipping companies and Lloyd’s insurers. It became a multibillion dollar business (the World Bank reckons $53 million a year was paid in ransoms) which dominated the economy of Somalia and indeed a whole swathe of east Africa, and turned the Ocean into something like a war-zone with the crews of container ships augmented by contingents of armed guards. At its height, at least 32 ships and 736 seamen were being held for ransom.
At the time, it was a bit of a shock – a reminder that the modern world (in spite of air travel and the internet) is still dependent on the 71% of the Earth’s surface that isn’t dry land, and moreover that those watery wastes (in spite of inter-continental ballistic missiles, sophisticated fighter planes and powerful navies) are still significant and untamed; potentially lawless places where dangerous criminals can have the upper hand. Although it seems that the navies of the world managed to solve this particular problem, there were plenty of other stories in the news this week to remind us once again that the sea is still an important, challenging and unpredictable environment for those concerned with naval strategy, military authority or law and order.
There was the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and its escorting craft sailing through the English Channel (on Trafalgar Day), on its way to the Eastern Mediterranean and the civil war in Syria. Nato looked on aghast, its only reaction to request that Spain, a Nato member, deny the Russians re-fuelling facilities at Spanish ports. And it seems that Russia took the opportunity to sneak two nuclear-capable warships (the Zeleny Dol and the Serpukhov, Buyan-M-class corvettes armed with Kalibr long-range cruise missiles) through the North Sea to the Baltic, unannounced, while western eyes were on the bigger fleet.
There was a reminder of the tensions in the South China Seas, with the USS Decatur, a US destroyer, sailing close to the disputed Paracel Islands (claimed by China to the consternation of its less powerful neighbours) to demonstrate, in the words of Pentagon spokesman Commander Gary Ross, “that coastal states may not unlawfully restrict the navigation rights, freedoms and lawful uses of the sea”.
There were more statistics from the Mediterranean to illustrate the ongoing tragedy of migrants and people-trafficking. On Sunday, 470 migrants from North Africa arrived in Naples and 619 in Catania. On Saturday, 2,400 people were rescued in 20 operations. The total so far this year for Italy is 140,000 (including 20,000 unaccompanied minors). The Italian navy has rescued more migrants than all the other European navies put together, but bizarrely it was reported this week that some Italian naval officers are under investigation for suspected culpable homicide over an incident in 2013 in which 268 migrants drowned when their ship sank in Maltese territorial waters, following apparent delays in the arrival of Maltese rescue ships. Equally bizarre were reports that coastguards in west Libya have attacked migrants and European rescue ships. According to the German aid organisation Sea Watch, at least four people died and many more went missing when part of a rubber boat carrying 150 migrants collapsed after an attack nine miles off the Libyan coast. Sea Watch also claimed that their own boat was attacked.
Finally, there were even two stories to remind us that we humans don’t just have each other to contend with as rivals for mastery of this dangerous watery element, that indeed it isn’t even our element and perhaps we don’t belong in it. First, from Australia, the government of New South Wales announced that it is rushing through laws to allow the deployment of shark nets along the coast, following the country’s twelfth attack – a surfer savaged by a great white – this year. Second, from the depths of the Irish sea, an epicentre of sea-monster sightings over the centuries, comes a story for halloween. While laying undersea cables, Scottish Power recently discovered the wreck of a World War I German submarine. It appears to be the craft UB-85, which was destroyed on April 30, 1918. By Allied action? No, by sea-monster attack, at least according to its commanding officer Kapitanleutnant Gunther Kreck, who described the huge creature thus; “This beast had large eyes, set in a horny sort of skull. It had a small head but with teeth that could be seen glistening in the moonlight…” That was April 30, 1918, remember – not April 01.
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