'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.'

Shipping industry urges EU governments to take up arms against Somali pirates

• Fears grow that fleets will be forced to avoid area
• Islamist group says it is hunting hijackers

Xan Rice in Nairobi and David Gow in Brussels The Guardian,

Saturday 22 November 2008 Article history

(Abdul Hassan, chief of the pirate group called the 'Central Regional Coastguard', carries a rocket-propelled grenade on to a boat with some of his crew. Photograph: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)

European shipowners are urging their governments to wage war on Somali pirates and seize vessels by force, the Guardian has learned, amid growing fear that shippers will otherwise avoid the seas off the Horn of Africa altogether - at huge cost to global trade.

A day after the world's biggest shipping company, AP Moller-Maersk, said it would divert some of its fleet from the Suez canal and take the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope, the industry urged stronger action against pirates. Last night, the BBC reported the UN had given the green light to warships to go after vessels.

Alfons Guinier, secretary general of the European Community Shipowners Association, said other companies were thinking of following Maersk's example. But he said that his association, which claims to speak for 41% of the world's merchant fleet, wanted EU governments to go further after the hijacking a week ago of the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star more than 400 miles off the Somalian coast.

"We know there will be more military forces in the area, but let's hope they will go after the pirates and stop this escalation," he said. "We're asking not just for more escorts but for repressive action." The demand comes after the International Maritime Organisation asked the UN security council to sanction dispatch of as many warships and aircraft as possible to "disrupt" pirate operations, secure shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden, and escort vessels, including those bringing food relief to war-torn Somalia.

The pirate gangs have operated with near impunity for years, but may now also face a confrontation on land.

Yesterday, rebels from the al-Shabaab Islamist movement entered Harardheere, a pirate base halfway up Somalia's east coast. An elder in the port said: "The Islamists arrived searching for the pirates and the Saudi ship. The Islamists say they will attack the pirates for hijacking a Muslim ship."

Some residents said the fighters wanted a cut of the ransom, but a spokesman for al-Shabaab claimed they were hunting the pirates for the "bigger crime" of hijacking a ship belonging to a Muslim country.

Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow said: "Haradheere is under our control, and we shall do something about that ship."

Pirates yesterday released a Greek chemical tanker held since September. The East African Seafarers' Association said the Liberian-flagged MV Genious and 19 crew were released after its owner paid a ransom.

But Somali pirates still hold at least 15 other vessels and more than 250 crew members. Kenya's foreign minister, Moses Wetangula, claimed yesterday that the pirates had netted $150m (£101m) in ransoms this year, though maritime experts say the figure is closer to $30m. Iran's biggest shipping firm confirmed that it had also received a ransom demand for a Hong-Kong-registered ship carrying 36,000 tonnes of wheat that was captured on Tuesday. The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, has called on shipowners to refuse to negotiate.

The European shipowners' demand will be made on Monday in talks in with the EU naval coordination cell set up by foreign ministers in September. It is creating an enforcement unit, under Operation Atalanta, based in RAF Northwood outside London. It is due to be fully operational in early December and be headed by a British rear admiral.

Guinier said the EU should coordinate its military efforts with other navies from Nato, Russia, Japan, Canada and India, which is sending four warships to the region. An Indian warship destroyed a pirate "mothership" this week.

The IMO's secretary-general, Efthimios Mitropoulos, meanwhile, told the UN that, with more than 12% of global oil transport passing through the Gulf of Aden, widespread diversions via South Africa would bring "a series of negative repercussions". "Such diversions would almost double the length of a typical voyage from the Gulf to Europe, thereby increasing fuel consumption, emissions and transport costs which would have to be passed on eventually to consumers everywhere," he said in a statement.

Peter Beck-Bang, a Maersk spokesman in Copenhagen, said that the diversion of its ships would add eight days to a voyage to the US and 14 days to one to Europe. If the situation remained unchanged, this would cost the firm "two-digit millions of dollars" in 2009. The diversion covers eight tankers and three container ships.