'I'm more afraid of piracy than of cyclones'

Greece has the biggest merchant fleet in the world. Here Panayiotis Tzanetakos, captain of the 75,000-tonne Greek-flagged Ellivita, speaks to Helena Smith about the ordeal modern-day piracy has created for crews

Helena Smith The Guardian, Saturday 22 November 2008 Article history

'No seaman has ever seen anything like this. It's a war zone out there and, put simply, the situation is out of control. They've got weapons, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], you name it, and it's not like before when they'd come on board and rob you. These days they hijack ships, take the entire crew hostage and demand huge ransoms. It's very primitive and very frightening.

'I come from a seafaring family, my father and brother are both merchant seamen and I've been in this job for nine years, doing seven months at a stretch on the high seas. I can tell you I'm scared. It makes you sick with worry when you transit through seas that are as dangerous as this. I have a young family, a wife who is expecting a baby and rightly she is beside herself with worry.

'This month we've had to go through the Gulf of Aden twice - carrying grain from the Ukraine to Iran and now carrying the fertilisers we picked up in Saudi Arabia and are taking to New Orleans.

'It creates a knot in the pit of your stomach passing through the Gulf. The first time we were totally unprotected and I felt so alone, so responsible for my crew and cargo.

'The second time we were able to join a convoy that was being escorted by a Russian frigate but when another merchant ship about 30 miles south of us was suddenly attacked, the warship had to leave. Everyone in this business is afraid. We are all in contact with each other over VHF, one ship [master] will let another know if he thinks he has seen something suspicious, and on the basis of the conversations I've heard it's no exaggeration to say that we're all terrified.

'More often than not the coalition warships that are meant to be patrolling the seas, warding off the pirates, are useless. A lot of the time they don't respond to distress calls and, anyway, the pirates are so quick.

'I am now more afraid of piracy than storms and cyclones. In fact, I'd rather take my ship into the North Atlantic in winter, when the seas can be at their most difficult to navigate, than transit the Gulf of Aden because, frankly, in terms of menace pirates are more dangerous than nature at its worst.

'My crew consists of eight Greeks and 12 Filipinos and I've instructed that lookouts be increased but the pirates tie the speedboats to trawlers and skiffs they pretend to be fishing in and usually such craft aren't visible more than three miles away.

'When they attack you - and so far the Ellivita has been lucky - the game is up quickly. In five to 10 minutes the pirates surround you in speedboats; then using ladders they board the vessel and from that moment there's nothing you can do. They're the ones with the weapons and they've taken the crew hostage.

'We're mariners not military men and our job is not to use guns against other people. But I also think we have reached a point where to protect ships we have to have security teams, or weapons, on board. Right now it seems it really does seem as if it can't get any worse. But crews are also concerned that the next thing we'll be seeing are deaths, people being shot by pirates demanding ransoms.'