Paul Chandler - Hostage: A Year at Gunpoint with Somali Pirates

Paul Chandler is a Cambridge-educated civil engineer and Rachel Chandler is a former government economist. Both have a passion for sailing and travelling, and honed their seamanship skills over some 30 years in the waters around the UK and the Mediterranean. The couple have enjoyed a part-time sailing lifestyle since retiring from full-time employment in 2005.

Sarah Edworthy has been a journalist since 1987, and has been on the staff of the London Times and the Daily Telegraph. She has cowritten three other books. She lives in London.

Copyright 2011 by Paul and Rachel Chandler

Postscript copyright 2012 by Paul and Rachel Chandler

All rights reserved

First US edition

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-61374-442-0

Cover design: Jonathan Hahn

Cover images: Somali pirate AFP/Getty Images; image of Rachel and Paul supplied by Channel 4 News; all other images courtesy of Rachel and Paul Chandler

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chandler, Paul, 1950 Sept. 28

Hostage: a year at gunpoint with Somali pirates / Paul and Rachel Chandler ; with Sarah Edworthy.

p. cm.

Originally published as: Hostage: a year at gunpoint with Somali gangsters. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company, 2011.

ISBN 978-1-61374-442-0 (pbk.)

1. Chandler, Paul, 1950 Sept. 28-2. Chandler, Rachel, 1953- 3. KidnappingSomalia--21st century. 4. HostagesSomalia21st century. 5. PiratesSomalia--21st century. I. Chandler, Rachel, 1953- II.

Edworthy, Sarah. III. Title.

HV6604.S58.C43 2012

364.154092--dc23

2012009964

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

To the hundreds of seafarers held hostage by Somali pirates and to their families. You are not forgotten.

Transliterations of Somali words as recorded in our diaries.

abbay father

adan white

af tongue

alen tea leaves

ambi mango

aniga I/me

ari goat

ashok supper

athiga you

baholi bowl

banjo fat

barballe bottle

baree tomorrow

basto spaghetti

behr liver

bes-bes chilli

bilod months, moons

bim the sound of a gunshot

biu water

bocol 100

briis rice

brr bread

budde small boat

cabadi later, after

cadu lunch

chad narcotic green plant

contun 50

courrah breakfast cun 1,000

dabagaale squirrel-like animal

daqika minute

deri tall

digir beans

doxi fly

ell well

fadlun please

ghodarr vegetable sauce

gil camel

guri house

habeen evening

hadha now

hal 1

halkan outside

halkas inside

haram forbidden

hilip meat

ho here!

kam how many?

ken give me

kiss kiss step by step

kitab book

kursi chair

lin lime

lin bombelmo grapefruit

lobaten 20

lobo 2

maawiis skirt worn by Somali men

magaa name

magas scissors

mahatsenit thank you

mahwille leader

maia no

malmod days

mante today

midi knife

mort killed

nag(ti) (my) woman

nin man

pochuko barbecue

Riija Rachel

sadambe day after tomorrow

sadden 30 sadeh 3

sagara small deer

sahibki friend

sano year

segashen 90 sheh tea shun 5

sideeten 80 son fast (not eating)

sooker sugar

tadobaad week

tadobo 7

toban 10

trrup playing cards

tuk thief

wahir small

wain big

yr and

Shrouded in white tarpaulin, with her name heavily taped over, a 38-foot yacht arrives by road at Bucklers Hard, near Lymington in Hampshire. Without ceremony, the anonymous boat is propped up on sturdy timbers to wait for her owners to claim her. The boatyard is almost full to capacity now that the last few haul-outs are done. Owners come and go, winterising their vessels draining engine oil, topping up anti-freeze, removing berth cushions and other items prone to mildew. Repairs are carried out at slow tempo in nearby sheds. Boats are given one last look over, then securely covered. Its a time for reflection. The end of one sailing season is the cue to dream about the next.

Shrewd winter winds play on the tarpaulins, then abate and blow more freshly as if keen to fill sails. In early spring, owners return to check their boats, discuss estimates for works and prepare for launch. The yard once again bustles with workers carrying out maintenance, installing new equipment, moving boats in and out of the repair sheds while sailing folk in cheery fleeces and Puffa jackets share chatter about proposed cruises and the latest gizmos.

In this busy, convivial world of cleaning, mending, painting and anti-fouling, the mystery boat remains untended, unremarked upon. No one knows her provenance. No one imagines her extraordinary story. No one guesses that here, under a tarpaulin beside the Solent in a boatyard famed for its construction of Nelsons favourite ship, the 64-gun HMS Agamemnon is a notorious international crime scene, preserved as if it were a time capsule of six days of claustrophobic trauma. The barnacles encrusted around her scuppers are from the Indian Ocean. The scratches and scrape marks hidden from view on her duck-egg blue fibreglass hull are scars inflicted by pirates slamming attack skiffs up against her sides. A teak grab rail has been smashed by the blunt metal of a gun; hatch stays are bent and hinges shorn where her hatch cover has been ripped off. A clean entry-and-exit hole on the boom marks the spot where a Kalashnikov bullet whistled through.

Below deck, disarray indicates a brutal ransacking and rushed departure. The orderly wood-panelled saloon that has provided homeliness for three decades of cruising has been violated by pirates who lolled insolently on the bunks, nervily toted guns and turned out every carefully packed shelf, drawer and locker in their single-minded bid for money. A cuddly gorilla, the boats mascot, lies on the floor, toppled from its chart-table perch, next to a dagger wrapped in an ikat-dyed maawiis, a traditional Somali sarong-style mens skirt. A single leather sandal, adorned in favoured pirate style with Good-Time Charlie gold buckles, lies discarded in a corner of the forard cabin. Mould grows where rice and flour supplies have spilled; cooking oil from a container labelled The Gift of Ireland via the World Food Programme coats the galley floor.