CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow they ain't. The pirates believed to have hijacked the supertanker Sirius Star were doubtless armed to the teeth, but with a far more fearsome arsenal than Johnny Depp's romantic hero in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Welcome to the world of 21st-century piracy, where attacks are launched from GPS-equipped speed boats by gangs armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rockets and grenades.
The modern-day brigands are also amassing hauls like never before – in mul
ti-million-pound ransoms rather than gleaming treasure.
Up to $1 million (£660,000) per vessel is being secured, with the pirates' total loot estimated to have reached some $30 million.
Somalia, on the Horn of Africa, has become the global piracy hotspot, fuelled by a combination of desperate men in a lawless country and its proximity to one of the world's major trade routes through the Suez Canal and Gulf of Aden – known as "the gates of hell".
Nigeria and Indonesia – the epicentre of piracy a decade ago – are among the other trouble spots.
A sharp increase in pirate attacks has been reported by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), with half of the 200 incidents this year off Somalia, compared with just a handful four years ago. Nearly 700 sailors have been taken hostage, with more than a third of them – and 15 vessels – still being held, awaiting ransom payments.
Hostages are not normally harmed, but nine crew members have been killed in attacks this year and a further nine are missing.
There are some 18 gangs operating off Somalia, using up to 60 vessels, including "mother ships", which take pirates into deep water, from where attacks are launched in speed boats.
Pirates often open fire at a target's bridge to stop the vessel and make it easier to board, using grappling hooks and ladders.
The weekend attack on the 319,400-tonne Sirius Star has shown pirates are upping the stakes – and intensifying the headache for shipping lines and security forces attempting to combat the threat.
The supertanker is the largest vessel yet hijacked, and it was much further out to sea – 450 miles – than previous attacks in the region. The incident would suggest any merchant vessel, however far offshore, could fall prey to pirates. The total area of "dangerous waters" is now estimated to cover some 2.5 million square miles.
Captain Pottengal Mukundan, the IMB's director, said: "The number of piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia is unprecedented. Pirates in the Gulf of Aden are growing increasingly brazen, attacking vessels, including tankers and large bulk carriers, with impunity.
"This major international seaway requires immediate increased protection and naval intervention. The increased frequency of piracy and heightening levels of violence are of significant concern to the shipping industry and all mariners.
"The types of attacks, the violence associated with the attacks, the number of hostages taken and the amounts paid in ransoms for the release of the vessels have all increased considerably."
There are no easy – or cheap – answers. Ship operators are already diverting vessels on to longer routes to avoid the Gulf of Aden and Suez Canal, and multinational security patrols are being stepped up. A coalition of international navies established a maritime security patrol area around the Gulf of Aden in August.
However, with the pirates' reach apparently extending, experts said longer routes would ramp up the cost of goods, while law enforcers were left with increasingly vast areas of ocean to scour.
Sailing via the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa adds some three weeks to journeys.
Arming ships is seen as no panacea either, despite that idea being welcomed by the United States Navy. Consultants said it could prompt pirates to open fire more readily, putting crews at greater risk.
Lieutenant Nate Christensen, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based US 5th Fleet, said: "This is a great trend. We would encourage shipping companies to take proactive measures to help ensure their own safety."
But, Cyrus Mody, of the IMB, said armed guards aboard ships could spark an arms race between predators and prey.
He said pirates often fired indiscriminately during an attack but did not aim to kill or injure crew. He said: "If someone onboard a ship pulls a gun, will the other side pull a grenade?"
Commodore Keith Winstanley of the Royal Navy, the deputy commander of the combined maritime forces in the Middle East, said: "It's inconceivable that the coalition can be everywhere. The pirates will go somewhere we are not. If we patrol the Gulf of Aden, then they will go to Mogadishu (the Somali capital], and vice versa."
BGN Risk, a London-based corporate security risk firm, said piracy in the Gulf of Aden could increase insurance and transport costs by $400 million (£260 million). It said the special risks insurance levy for crossing the gulf had rocketed from $500 (£330) per voyage last year to $20,000.
Liam Morrissey, a partner with the company, said: "This dramatic rise in piracy impacts the entire global supply chain by interrupting deliveries and escalating costs.
"Five warships can't guarantee complete safety. Logistics in the area are difficult, and the ongoing regional instability creates challenges for private security firms.
"The alternative option of travelling the long way around Africa in safer waters adds a minimum of 20 days transit time, bringing associated increased costs in fuel, payroll and lost delivery time."
Another problem is what to do with the pirates once captured. OB Sisay, an Africa specialist at risk consultancy Exclusive Analysis, told the shipping journal Lloyd's List: "While the UK could prosecute the pirates under the UK criminal offence of piracy, Royal Navy officers on anti-piracy duties currently have no law enforcement powers and therefore any evidence that they produced in the event of a UK prosecution would be likely to be thrown out."
The Rail Maritime and Transport union, which represents seafarers, has called for international action against piracy, which should include tackling Somalia's problems.
Bob Crow, its general secretary, said: "There are clearly deep economic and social problems in poverty-stricken countries like Somalia that are feeding the piracy problem, and they, too, require international co-operation because they are also a result of the global economy."
Clearly, as long as there are riches afloat on the high seas, there will be pirates out there to plunder them.
Robbing thugs or Robin Hoods?THE pirates of Puntland, the northern breakaway area of Somalia, are unapologetic about their trade.
Their spokesman, Januna Ali Jama, based in the port of Eyl, where scores of hijacked vessels are anchored, argues vehemently that the increasingly professional pirates are the Robin Hoods of the sea, righting numerous wrongs against Somalia.
"Our country is destroyed by foreigners who dump toxic waste at our shores," Ali Jama argued in an interview with the BBC Somali Service.
Huge waves that battered Puntland after the Asian tsunami at Christmas 2004 killed 300 people, destroying thousands of homes and stirring up tonnes of nuclear and toxic waste illegally dumped offshore in the 1990s. The United Nations Environment Programme reported many unusual illnesses in the region following the tsunami. It said European companies were involved in the dumping, but there was never any accurate assessment of the extent of the problem.
Abdullah Elmi Mohamed, a Somali academic studying in Sweden, said that the European companies charged "approximately $8 per tonne (for dumping off Somalia], while in Europe the cost for the disposal and treatment of toxic waste material could go up to $1,000 per tonne."
With Puntland unrecognised internationally, little diplomatic pressure can be put on the region's authorities, which say piracy also grew after international "sea robber" fishing fleets plundered and wrecked its fishing grounds. The UN estimates fish worth at least £50 million a year has been taken illegally from Somali waters by Spanish, South Korean and other foreign boats, which also raided Somali fishermen's nets and used destructive techniques that have wiped out tuna shoals, destroyed fish eggs and caused havoc with the marine environment.
Most of Puntland's pirates are former poor fishermen with no particular political ideology who have turned to more lucrative work, plying the seas in search of ransom targets, travelling in light speedboats from at least two mother ships far out at sea.
The pirates are heroes in a shattered land. Millions of dollars in ransoms are being paid by desperate ship-owners – more than $30 million so far this year, one and a half times the annual budget of the Puntland authorities – and once-impoverished ports like Eyl have become boomtowns.
