DAWN OF THE PIRATE

How did a mere bunch of Somali pirates manage to hijack one of the world's biggest supertankers?
All too easily, say industry insiders.The spoils are huge, the crews unarmed, and the shipowners themselves curiously uninterested in stopping them...
The Sirius Star is one of the world's newest, and biggest, supertankers. Like other modern Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), it cost about $150m to build and measures around 330m from bow to stern, or nearly twice as long as the 41-storey building at, 30 St Mary Axe, better known as the Gherkin, is tall. It is, in the words of Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the US Naval Forces Fifth Fleet, roughly three times the size of an aircraft carrier.So how come a vessel whose cargo is so substantial that its loss can cause the world oil price to jump by more than a dollar fall prey to a ragged band of Somali pirates who, in all probability, scrambled on board from a couple of fast launches? How could one of the biggest man-made objects on earth become the victim of yet another hijacking in the waters off east Africa, an area that has witnessed more than 90 such incidents this year alone (and which yesterday witnessed another, in the shape of a Hong Kong freighter called the Delight)?
The short answer is: easily. Contrary to what many imagine, the deck of a fully charged VLCC will be barely 3.5 metres above the waterline. After hitching a ride on a similar vessel from Saudi Arabia to Singapore for his book on modern-day piracy, Dangerous Waters, the author and former merchant seaman John Burnett wrote: "Could pirates take over a ship this huge, this important? On a VLCC you are above the world; the idea of being boarded and attacked by pirates seems ludicrous and on this voyage I shared with the captain his sense of invincibility ..."
But, the captain conceded and Burnett somewhat prophetically concluded, "laden with crude oil, it will be easy for pirates to take over this ship. They will come up from behind within the shadow of radar coverage and, attacking from the stern, the lowest point of the ship, they will throw their grappling hooks over the railings and scamper up the sides. Anyone standing on the bow of a fishing boat or a large speedboat could be up and over the railing of a VLCC in seconds. Perhaps we are not so invincible after all. Perhaps it is only a matter of time."
By Jon Henley
To read more go to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/19/piracy-somalia-supertanker-sirius-star
As in the days of Noah...