Pirates are a menace you know! As a young lad, and I’m certainly no spring chicken now although I can still show these modern-day pale faced youngsters a thing or two, I wanted to be a pirate but well, that career never passed muster. So here I am now with a story to tell from my distant past!

I was the proud Master of a brand new bulk carrier recently out of China and on our maiden voyage we headed down from ‘yellow peril’ country where the ship had been built and with a cargo of coal bound for Genoa, Italy. We passed Indonesia and up the Malacca Straits which was certainly pirate territory but at the time of the incident we happened to be in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Our fine vessel was plodding along at about 8 knots, at least 700 miles from land and although my company and the media could never quite grasp how pirates happened to be so far from the safety of the shores believe me it was an ordeal that I would never want to repeat.

Prior to the incident pirates had been hitting the headlines nearly every week, a ship here and a ship there – but I prepared my crew as best possible.  I mean that is my job after-all! For the two weeks prior to arriving at the Malacca Straits we constructed contingency plans, conducted drills and everybody from the Chief Engineer to the Wiper, the Master to the Cook had a task and new exactly what to do, when to do it and how to do it! We all had extremely important roles to play, manning fire hoses to ward off the attackers, locking doors and preparing rations should we have to hide (if the pirates got on-board) and to calling for help over the radio’s. I even had the cook ready to make Molotov cocktails from empty beer bottles and paraffin!

We practised a few of those on the way across as there is an art to making one, lighting it and throwing it before anything happens – certainly the cook now knows the best way to do this after setting fire to his trousers! He spent a week in bed after that occurrence!

So we were prepared well and although the Indian Ocean is not particularly known for piracy we drilled and trained our way across – no sires, no two-bit pirate with a Kalashnikov and an evil glint was going to step foot on my command!
We were plodding our way across the Indian Ocean, nothing for hundreds of miles except calm seas and the hot sun and it being a Sunday and a day off (except  of course the duty officer on watch) we opted for a barbecue! This is traditional on most merchant vessels, a means by which steam can be let off and the moral to be raised a notch or two, a call to rally and a time to shed the weight of responsibility! I opened up the bond locker for the occasion and offered up a couple of boxes of wine, nothing too heavy and just a little something to move things along!

I suppose by sundown some of the engineers and perhaps the crew were a little bit tipsy but nothing too over-the-top. The conversation for most of the afternoon had ranged from woman to football, with a few expletives; a fist waved here and there and even more slaps on the backs as inhibitions fell away in proportion to the amount consumed!

I attend barbecues mostly for the food, but being a Captain and at the top it is often better to remain distant – I like to let the young lads relax without an old geezer like myself making them talk polite! And so, after a glass or two of the red stuff and a silent withdrawal I retired to my cabin for a small glass of whisky and a relaxed afternoon nap! Nothing better can be had anywhere!

The first thing I knew about the change of events was when I was woken up suddenly by some loud bangs! Gunshots they were if I wasn’t mistaken! Gunshots? Gunshots on my boat – I scrambled out of my chair where I seemed to have dozed off and in the process spilled the remains of my glass of whisky over the paperwork lying around! I ran up to the bridge and pushing aside a startled second officer (who perhaps had drunk one too many glasses of wine – can’t get the staff these days) I slammed my hand onto the general alarm to get my crew into action! Over the intercom system I then informed the whole vessel that pirates where attacking. “Plan A”, I shouted, “Plan A”, actions stations, pirates have boarded, pirates have boarded”. Plan A is what we had practised should pirates have managed to board the vessel. No good fighting back with a steak knife, that would be like hitting a giraffe with a wisp of hay! Plan A is Retreat, a pull back to a secure area and believe me there is no more secure area than the engine room!

I give full credit to my crew! They appeared rapidly at the engine room door, two of them carrying the still smoking barbecue, another piled high with wine and the cook appeared with two flaming Molotov cocktails (the second engineer thankfully grabbed a fire-extinguisher and put them out) and so we all piled into the engine room – the chief engineer rapidly fired up the welding machine and proceeded to put some finishing touches to an already locked door.

The chief was a very good welder! I can do the odd spot or two, to keep some plates together but he was in a class of his own! I can still recall his artwork clearly as he put a large bead around the main engine room entrance, one additional one around the boiler room funnel exit and a few tacks on the steering gear emergency exit. Believe me, as I supped on a glass of whisky (some bright member of my crew had put this into my hand as I checked and rechecked that our contingency plan was following the prescribed course) he did a good job! The Chief then proceeded to disable the engine, a ways to a means to stop the pirates having control of the propulsion system and then we all retired to the control room to wait it out!

It is hard to describe how exactly we managed to cope for the next few hours! The main engine was stopped but we remained confident in the knowledge that no pirate was going to get control of it, or us for that matter!  And they could shoot all the bullets they wanted at the entrance door but the chiefs welding and the thick steel would prevent all but a nuclear missile to pass through. And so, without too much hiccup we settled in to wait it out. The younger guys decided to continue the barbecue near an extraction fan and so we munched away on ribs and drank the remains of the wine till the sun started to set!

I fell asleep on a pile of rags behind the control console! I didn’t want to, I am normally in charge and keeping the troops rallied but my bottle of whisky disappeared faster than it should have and there was not much else to do whilst we waited it out. They all seemed merry despite the precarious situation we had found ourselves in but they are young and perhaps do not suffer from the weight of responsibility that I carry like a father to his children.

I woke up early morning with a very sore head, presumably caused by exhaust fumes from the engine and looked around. Everybody was snoring away and rather than wake them up, for what anyway, I decided that I would now initiate proceedings with the pirates, obviously by phone from the engine control room to the bridge, a place that they had undoubtedly taken command of!

I phoned up and a pirate answered immediately!

“Hello”, the pirate said!

He spoke good English for a pirate but all-the-better to listen to his demands! I said politely, “I am the master of this vessel, what are your intentions with it and what do you want from us”.

The voice at the other end seemed rather bemused and replied “I am the chief officer of a passing vessel, nobody else is here and the engine has stopped, what is going on”?

I must admit we were all rather confused. I didn’t trust this voice initially, I mean who would in a situation like this - he could have been a pirate trying to trick us all into coming out of the engine room! But after a while it became clear that the pirates, having found that the vessel was without power and that we were safely behind locked doors had decided to make a run for it! A passing ship, alerted to our situation had decided to board us – and found nobody there!
After a while I gave the command to open up the doors. The chief engineer was muttering something that sounded like “who bloody welded these things up and what are you all doing down here” but once he had grasped the situation he soon had the gas torch lit and the doors open!

I’m not sure why nobody believed us over what had occurred! Pirates had attacked and we reacted in an efficient and pre-arranged manner. I admit that it seemed odd that we were so far away from land when it happened and in an area that had never seen a pirate in the last 100 years, and it may have seemed stranger that they left without so much as a foot print or spent bullet but then do pirates normally leave a business card? I guess they don’t and because we had locked that ship up tighter than the crown jewels they decided to find an easier target elsewhere!

Most of the crew remained silent on the matter when they came to be questioned by the various authorities. Many stated for the record that they had not seen any pirates and a few mumbled that they had been too pissed at the time to remember much of what had transpired. Makes sense to me, young kids shocked by such an occurrence were lost for words. It is always the Captain that has to take command and it is always the crew who struggle to comprehend the enormity of the situation! But they were a good bunch so let bygones be bygones.

I heard those gunshots clearly and will remember them for the rest of my life! Bang, Bang Bang, they went, as if they were shooting in my cabin and at me.
We had pirates on-board and that’s the end of the story!

I read later, in some newspaper, that the Chief Officer was quoted as saying “we thought it would be fun to wake the Captain up by banging some pans next to his head”! I’m not sure what game he was trying to play; anyway, I’m sure that it was him that drank my whisky! I can’t trust a chap like that you know!

Officers like that would say anything to make themselves look good!

A lucky escape for us and despite receiving no thanks from the company for my rapid response and perhaps for having saved their new vessel, all I got was an invoice for three steel doors and subsequent installation. A small price to pay, I suppose.