John S. Burnett - Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas

Table of Contents

Takes the reader on a riveting journeywhich is both shocking and terrifyinginto the world of pirates and maritime terrorism.

Burnett brings to the general public the reality of shipborne security problems, and tells them bluntly that this plague did not disappear with the death of Blackbeard.

Provides a fascinating (and factual) glimpse into the seedy world of Far East crime syndicates, phantom ships, and smuggling, and elucidates the very real dangers that ships face on a daily basis... A compelling tale.

A rich and rare insight into life at sea todaywith detailed descriptions of day-to-day onboard operations, the experiences and attitudes of seafarers, and the factors that have left ships so prone to attack. There have been few books in recent years that have so vividly evoked the reality of living and working conditions in the present-day shipping industry... [Burnett] certainly succeeds in portraying the brutal reality of many attacks and also in conveying the resulting underlying unease and uncertainty among seafarers... A valiant and welcome attempt to raise wider awareness of a problem that has plagued the shipping industry for far too long.

A riveting report on a little-reported international crime... Haunting.

Burnett... shows, in this original and intriguing work, piracy is alive and well... [His] well-researched investigation is spiked with plenty of seafaring action.

Will have readers agog... Portrays the chilling experience of being stalked by low-slung, ghostly boats at night.

For Jackie.

And Koos and Mien,
in friendship.

Attacks on shipping by pirates and terrorists are threats to global commerce and security, but they impact no one more directly than the men and women on the front linesthose working the ships on the high seas. In the wake of September 11, their level of risk has increased considerably. Citing concerns for the security of the Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) featured in this booka vessel that routinely transits hostile watersand for the safety of its crew, the oil major that granted the author passage aboard the ship requested that it not be identified. This giant tanker carrying crude oil from the Middle East is thus referred to only with the pseudonym the Montrose . The names of the crew and company personnel have been similarly changed, and the name of the oil major itself has been omitted. No other details of the investigation have been altered.

Joseph Conrad

The young Indonesian poked me in the stomach with the barrel of his assault rifle. His eyes, cold and hard, challenged me to resist. I was at the edge of doing something stupid.

I had been sailing alone across the South China Sea to Singapore in January 1992 aboard my sloop Unicorn. While not a large boatonly thirty-two feet longit is stout enough for ocean passages and comfortable enough to call home. Setting off single-handed was not recommended; Indonesian harbor officials in Borneo on the other side had warned me that an oil tanker steaming through the same area had been attacked by pirates the night before.

Piracy was not a threat I took very seriously; I was more concerned with the difficult navigation through the reefs, dodging the heavy ship traffic, and getting enough catnaps during the three-day passage. Piracy was something I associated with Long John Silver, Captain Hook, and Hollywood, a childhood game to be played over the mounds of dirt, dueling with cutlasses torn from a picket fence. How could pirates climb the sheer steel wall of the hull of a big ship, I wondered?

I was approaching one of the busiest waterways in the world, shipping lanes that linked Europe to the Pacific, the Persian Gulf to Japan and China; it is a highway for six hundred commercial ships a day. It is also, I was to discover, prime hunting ground for pirates.

It was my second night out from Borneo and the atmosphere was heavy and airless. Lightning flashed off the port side from a thunder-storm over Sumatra. The reassuring loom of the Singapore City lights hovered faintly on the horizon in front of me to the west. Even without the benefit of wind, without the use of the sails, and puttering along with the small auxiliary engine, landfall, I estimated, should be early afternoon. And four or five hours after that Id be sitting at the bar of the Changi Yacht Club, knocking back a cold medicinal ale. Then sleep. Priorities.

The merchant vessels that chugged through the shipping lanes could not see the Unicorn and its limp mainsail, and it was up to me to avoid them. One large container ship, its decks flooded in bright light, like Times Square on New Years Eve, paralleled my course to starboard; fire hoses shot water out into the darkness. I watched her gradually change course, then turn sharply to port, and in disbelief I realized it was heading straight for me. A ship bearing down at eighteen knotsthere was not a lot I could do. The bastard was trying to run me over! I threw the tiller hard over, increased speed to a smoky six knots; I was being chased out of the shipping lanes. I looked back and up at the towering clutter of bright lights that was about to swallow me whole. Then it dawned on me that the captain was assuming the small blip on his radar screen was a pirate boat. The ship finally returned to its original east-west course and I throttled down and slumped back, exhausted and shaking. He had run me out of the shipping lanes to where he couldnt go, apparently satisfied he had scared the daylights out of a bunch of pirates. The Unicorn hobby-horsed up and down on the ships wake, corkscrewed and twisted out of control. The boom swung wildly from side to side and the engines small propeller cavitated uselessly in the air as the stern lifted out of the water.

The sea is a lonely place at the best of times, but this was one of those moments when I realized how totally alone I could be. Even the sensation of being so isolated in the middle of an ocean with no one around for a thousand miles cannot compare to this night in the shipping lanes.

Dead tired, I was getting confused. Bright halogen lights decked the passing ships from stem to stern as part of their antipiracy defenses. With their regulation navigation lights obliterated, I had no way of knowing what they were doing, whether they were coming or going and at what angle.