Modern Pirates on the High Seas Described in DANGEROUS WATERS

Piracy is alive and well, not just off of Somalia and the Horn of Africa, but in numerous places around the world including Nigeria and the Philippines. When John S. Burnett wrote this book in 2002, the hot spot was the Malacca Straits, the channel that funnels traffic past Singapore, between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

At some locations the straits are only a mile or two across. A line of ships run the gauntlet of organized gangs who want the cargo. Most chillingly, they often want the ship itself which can be rapidly dispatched to offer to haul cargo at some busy port, disappearing once loaded, never to be seen again, thanks to a new paint job. Sometimes the crew is found abandoned on a reef. Often, the crew is never heard of again. A ship that comes under attack, even within sight of other ships, is on its own.

The owners of the cargo haulers refuse to pay to increase safety. They keep the ships going as they slowly fall apart, then get rid of them once worn out.

Besides organized pirate gangs, there are small groups recruited from incredibly poor Indonesian villages where life is cheap and the new hirelings find themselves raiding ships in the straits, terrified as they grab the captain's safe and anything not tied down. They hightail it back to the Indonesian waters, outside the jurisdiction of the Malaysians guarding the ships. Indonesia is the biggest source of these pirate attacks because no one patrols on that side. Some pirates are even freelancing Indonesian naval units (the politics in this area may well have changed by now...Wikipedia says the Indonesians, Malaysians, and Singapore authorities are cooperating to guard the straits.)

The crews are unarmed and can only fight back with lots of lighting, zig-zagging when needed to throw up huge wakes off the stern, and high-power water hoses to swamp rapidly approaching boats trying to put people aboard. The looming decks of incredibly huge Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC)...so large they never make port but offload to standard freighters...are not even immune to boarding. Pirates know the crew doesn't have weapons and doesn't want any shooting when they're carrying oil from the Middle East to Japan or some other port. Once aboard, instructions are to lock yourself in but the pirates always find a way in. Against all rules, some crews are armed. No one, for example, has ever taken an Israeli or Russian vessel because they're packing heat.

Burnett's story follows his ride aboard a VLCC through the straits, then catches a ride with a smaller freighter where the fear is palpable as they run the gauntlet. Through it, he slips in interview material with anti-piracy experts.

In the last chapters, Burnett discusses the threat of fanatic terrorists who could casually block a major ship channel by commandeering a tanker or cargo ship. With the right cargo, a hijacked ship could be blown up to destroy half of a major city. Luckily, this nightmare suggested by Burnett and others since 9/11 hasn't come to pass. There are those who believe it inevitable.