![]() ![]() Lob those at the side of the ship and you create an instant wall of flame: any pirate trying to climb through it will be in serious trouble. ![]() Guards can equip themselves with Molotov cocktails, glass bottles filled with petrol. ![]() Razor wire can be strung out all around the deck. If that doesn’t work - big oil tankers can’t get up to 16 knots - then build in protection. If you can monitor the pirates effectively, you can usually accelerate out of trouble. It is virtually impossible to board a ship moving at more than 16 knots. The security firms also put in plenty of surveillance. Unless they also know there’s something really valuable on board, they will give it a miss. The pirates have observers, known as ‘dickers’ in the trade, spread along the coast: if they see armed men patrolling the decks of a passing vessel, they know it’s well guarded. ‘If you do that, you are pretty unlucky if you do get banjoed.’ ‘Keep a constant display of force on deck,’ he says. For steering a ship safely through the most dangerous waters, the bill can easily run to six figures.īut how effective are these private-sector solutions? The techniques are rough and to the point. One British company charges £2,335 a day for three on-board guards and their sonic equipment, plus £4,500 in travel expenses for each man. The French security specialist Secopex charges $30,000 for patrol boats crewed by former French naval commandos. ‘A lot of guys come out of Iraq and think this is easy money, but they soon find they’re earning every penny,’ says one consultant. On web boards for marine mercenaries, there are companies paying £120 a day: hardly a fortune when the day’s work might involve a firefight with pirates waving AK-47s, and the risk of six months in some Somali hellhole as a hostage. And they have been joined by dozens of smaller players, some well trained, others less so.Ĭowling pays experienced men £350 a day for guarding a ship through pirate water a team leader might get £450 a day. British firms such as Armor Group and Col Tim Spicer’s Aegis are also in the market. Giants such as Blackwater, the US company with a trigger-happy reputation from Iraq, have fitted out their own patrol boats to escort ships that want some muscle alongside. Now they are looking for another trouble-spot where they can deploy their expertise. There are already dozens of small armies for hire around the world: ‘private military corporations’, as the mercenaries have restyled themselves. No surprise, then, that shipowners are hitting back. Yet within days the pirates were back at work, capturing a string of other vessels. Earlier this month, the US navy used snipers to kill three Somali pirates who had been holding an American captain hostage on a lifeboat, while French commandos killed two pirates as they stormed a captured yacht (see picture). Operations against the pirates have been getting fiercer. Last year, more than 100 ships were attacked off the Somali coast. But they have been a menace for a long time. ‘Or rather, every man and his dolphin.’ The Somali pirates burst on to the world stage by seizing the oil tanker Sirius Star with a cargo worth $100 million last November. ‘Every man and his dog is out there,’ said one security consultant who preferred to remain anonymous. There’s little doubting the eagerness of the mercenaries - or the scale of the problem. Can the pirates be defeated by a few resourceful mercenaries, ready to take the fight back to them in the kind of robust language they understand? Or, as many shipping experts argue, is that just going to inflame an already difficult situation, when the solution can only really come from better policing by the world’s major navies? But there is also a fierce debate going on within the shipping industry. ![]() In the past year, as pirates have menaced the Gulf and the Indian Ocean demanding bigger and bigger ransoms, so dozens of companies have sprung up to fight them. Iraq is being wound down, and guys are looking around and latching onto piracy.’ ‘This is going to be the next Iraq in terms of where mercenaries are going. ‘We’re one of the groups throwing our hats into the ring,’ says Cowling. The product: providing the men, the know-how, and if necessary the weapons, to defeat the pirates that are the scourge of Somali waters. An experienced security consultant, he has just set up a company called Shipguard, with a small office in Clerkenwell. Jim Cowling has chosen the right moment to launch his new business. ![]()
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