7903 - Arr... Pirates... we'll cutcha if you mess Floridians!

[scottobear]

Pirate Attack Repelled by Cruise Ship Crew

MIAMI - Pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade and machine guns Saturday in an attack on a luxury cruise liner off the east African coast, the vessel's owners said.


Two armed boats approached the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles off the coast of Somalia and fired as the boats' occupants attempted to get onboard, said Bruce Good, a spokesman for Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp.

The ship outran them and changed its course.

"Our suspicion at this time is that the motive was theft," Good said, adding that the crew had been trained for "various scenarios, including people trying to get on the ship that you don't want on the ship."

The attackers never got close enough to board the Spirit, but one member of the 161-person crew was injured by shrapnel, said Debrah Natansohn, president of the cruise line.

Press Association, the British news agency, said passengers awoke to the sound of gunfire as two 25-foot inflatable boats approached the liner.

Edith Laird of Seattle, who was traveling on the ship with her daughter and a friend, told British Broadcasting Corp. TV in an e-mail that her daughter saw the pirates out of their window.

"There were at least three rocket-propelled grenades that hit the ship, one in a state room," Laird wrote. "We had no idea that this ship could move as fast as it did and (the captain) did his best to run down the pirates."

The vessel's 151 passengers, mostly Americans with some Australians and Europeans, were gathered in a lounge for their safety, Good said. None were injured.

The Spirit had been bound for Mombasa, Kenya, at the end of a 16-day voyage from Alexandria, Egypt. It was expected to reach the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean on Monday, and then continue on its previous schedule to Singapore, company officials said.

The 10,000-ton cruise ship, registered in the Bahamas, sustained minor damage, Good said. "They took some fire, but it's safe to sail," he said.

Piracy along the Somalia coast is common — several ships a month are attacked or hijacked, with valuables stolen and crews held for ransom.

Somalia's 1,880-mile coastline is Africa's longest, and the country has had no effective central government since opposition leaders ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. They then turned on each other, transforming this nation of 7 million into a patchwork of battling fiefdoms ruled by heavily armed militias.

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[scottobear.livejournal.com]

Cruise liner outruns armed pirate boats



(CNN) -- A luxury cruise line will re-evaluate whether to offer future cruises off the coast of Somalia after pirates attempted to attack one of its ships early Saturday.

The pirates were in two small boats and were carrying machine guns and a rocket-propelled grenade when they attempted the attack on Seabourn Cruise Lines' "Spirit" about 5:35 a.m. local time Saturday, Deborah Natansohn, president of the cruise line, told CNNRadio.

The ship was carrying 150 passengers and a crew of about 160.

The ship, she said, immediately instituted its emergency response system. "The occupants of those boats did not succeed in boarding the ship and eventually turned away ... our captain and crew did a terrific job taking responsive action."

Passenger Mike Rogers of Vancouver, Canada, said the pirates were shooting and sending rockets at the boat. (Watch how cruise ship outran pirates -- 1:28)

"The captain tried to run one of the boats over, but they were small boats, about 25 feet long," he told CNNRadio affiliate CKNW in Vancouver.

"Each one had four or five people on it, and (the captain) said he was going to do anything to keep them from getting on board."

The captain, however, did not hit the alarm button to alert passengers of the emergency, Rogers said. "He announced it over the speakers because he was scared people would run up on deck, and he didn't want people on deck because they would have been shot."

The cruise ship eventually outran the pirates' boats, Natansohn said. One person suffered minor injuries, she said without elaborating.

"There's some minor damage done to the ship," Rogers said. "There's no water right now, for instance, in some places, and I believe one of the grenades actually went off in one of the cabins, but everyone on board is fine."

The ship is now en route to the Seychelles Islands, Natansohn said.

On Thursday, the United Nations' World Food Program warned that hijackings off the coast of Somalia were restricting the delivery of needed food assistance to the country.

"The southern Somali coastline is one of the most dangerous in the world," the WFP said on its Web site. "In recent months, WFP's operations in Somalia have been sabotaged by the hijackings of two vessels carrying relief food. Ship owners are now demanding armed escorts to travel in these waters."

Natansohn said efforts were under way Saturday to locate the pirates. "We have notified U.S., Canadian and Australian authorities because most of our passengers come from those three countries, as well as local authorities in Africa."

"Seabourn 'Spirit' has offered itineraries in that part of the world before, but we'll obviously be looking at the incident to determine what to do in the future," she said.

Rogers said, "We're always looking for adventure, but this is probably a little more than we would normally look for."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/11/05/somalia.pirates/