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In chasing pirates, Navy comes full circle

The Navy is getting back to its roots. Re-established specifically after the Revolutionary War to combat North African pirates who were plundering merchant ships, American sailors now find themselves toe-to-toe with seagoing thugs again, called on to rid the seas of violent hijackers.

At least three American destroyers engaged hijacked vessels off the coast of Somalia the week of late October, early November.

On Oct. 28, U.S. ships responded to a distress call from the hijacked Japanese-owned but Panamanian-flagged cargo ship Golden Nori, firing warning shots over the bow and tearing into two pirate skiffs with their 25mm chain guns, setting the boats ablaze.

Lt. John Gay, spokesman for 5th Fleet in Bahrain, could not confirm the action was taken by American warships. But news reports have said the Norfolk, Va.-based destroyers Arleigh Burke and Porter were involved, and that the Golden Nori was carrying the chemical benzene. A caption in an official Navy photo said the Porter sank the skiffs.

“[The Golden Nori] was seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, then taken around the Horn [of Africa] and south to an area where there has been piracy in the past,” he said. The destroyers reacted to a distress call, and tried to get the hijacked cargo ship to change course, then “warning shots were fired in front of the vessel, and subsequently the skiffs were engaged, disabled and sunk,” he said.

CNN reported that Somali government officials gave the Arleigh Burke permission to follow Golden Nori into Somali waters.

As of press time Nov. 2, the Golden Nori remained under pirate control, but coalition forces “continue to monitor the situation” somewhere off the Somali coast, Gay said.

He would not say if additional U.S. or coalition forces are being dispatched to the scene.

In the second incident of the week, coalition forces the morning of Oct. 30 were informed by the International Maritime Bureau in Kuala Lumpur that the North Korean cargo ship Dai Hong Dan was in distress about 60 miles northeast of Mogadishu. Gay said the Norfolk-based destroyer James E. Williams launched a helicopter to observe the scene while the ship closed the distance to the Dai Hong Dan. Williams was 50 miles away when U.S. forces got the distress call.

One news account reported that as the Americans commanded the pirates to put down their weapons over the bridge-to-bridge radio, the Korean crew stormed the bridge and retook control of the ship. In the process, one pirate was killed and three wounded. Three crewmen were also wounded, reportedly suffering gunshot wounds.

Gay said a team of three Navy corpsmen, a Korean-speaking U.S. sailor and a ship security force boarded the Korean vessel to aid the wounded.

The three wounded Koreans were taken back to the U.S. ship for treatment but returned to the Dai Hong Dan.

“All the U.S. sailors are back on the James E. Williams without incident, and the U.S. Navy has departed the area,” he said.

But that incident may not be over, either. A Nov. 2 news report out of Nairobi, Kenya, said a maritime organization has raised suspicions about the North Korean vessel and has called for further action.

“The U.S. Navy should detain the vessel, its crew and the pirates because they are involved in suspicious activities,” said Andrew Mwangura, of the Seafarers Assistance Program in Kenya.

He called on the Navy to bring the Dai Hong Dan into port in Mombasa so the crew can be interviewed.

A hunting ground

Pirate activity off eastern Africa has gained the attention of world naval forces over the past few years. Coalition Task Force 150, made up of U.S., Australian, French, German, Pakistani, Italian and British naval forces, patrols the Red Sea, Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden.

As recently as June, the Danish ship Danica White was captured by Somali pirates and then pursued by the dock landing ship Carter Hall.

The Little Creek, Va.-based ship was in the area at the time and tried to prevent the capture by shooting flares and firing over the bow of the cargo ship, but the hijackers managed to drive the captured ship and crew into territorial waters. Gunfire from the Carter Hall did ignite the pirate skiffs in tow behind the Danica White.

Asked why the ship pulled back from a hot pursuit to respect the territorial waters of what’s described as a “transitional” government, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters June 8 that “we abide by, on the high seas, the international standards that are applied to territorial waters.”

The Danica White crew was released from captivity 83 days later, after a ransom was paid to the hijackers.

In another high-profile incident, back in November 2005, passengers aboard the cruise ship Seabourn Spirit, while 200 miles off the coast of Somalia, awoke to the sound of AK47 and rocket-propelled-grenade fire hitting the ship. The ship’s captain was able to maneuver to safety. The destroyer Gonzalez was later dispatched to aid the cruise ship.

On Jan. 21, 2006, the destroyer Winston S. Churchill rescued the hijacked crew of the freighter Delta Ranger off the coast of Somalia after responding to a distress call. It took several shots over the bow from Churchill’s guns to get the pirates to pull over. Ten pirates were captured in that incident.

Then on March 18 of that year, the crews of the cruiser Cape St. George and Gonzalez got in a 10-minute shootout with pirates off the coast of Somalia. In the melee, one suspected pirate was killed. The remaining 12, including five wounded, were taken aboard the cruiser. The skiffs — containing assault rifles, RPGs and “climbing gear” — were hoisted aboard, too.

According to 5th Fleet data, four other vessels were under pirate control off southern Somalia as of Nov. 2.

But eastern Africa does not corner the market on piracy. The International Maritime Bureau reported recently that the waters off Nigeria match Somalia in terms of pirate incidents. The Little Creek-based dock landing ship Fort McHenry deployed Oct. 16 to that region — the Gulf of Guinea — to establish a persistent U.S. naval presence there under the billing “Africa Partnership Station.” The Straits of Malacca near Singapore are also notorious hunting grounds for ship hijackers.

Stepped-up training

As a result of the activity in recent years, U.S. sailors heading to these areas are deploying with new weapons and training. Under a ramped-up program, warships send selected sailors to special boarding team schools prior to deployment.

Any sailor, male or female, from culinary specialist to fire controlman, is eligible as long as he or she meets physical fitness requirements, has a second-class swimmer qualification and can pass a background check, said Bill Goodnoah, functional team leader for visit, board, search and seizure training at the Center for Security Forces in Norfolk.

Deploying destroyers, for example, are now required to have three qualified boarding teams of about seven sailors each, drawn from the ship’s crew.

Some 2,000 sailors a year train in four sites — Chesapeake, Mayport, Fla., San Diego and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii — under a curriculum provided by the center.

After a prerequisite three-week armed sentry/security reaction force course, candidates attend a two-week advanced tactics course before getting the three-week session on vessel boardings. Graduates are qualified for Level 2 noncompliant boardings on ships with a freeboard of 25 feet or less. They do not participate in Level 3 boardings, which involve helicopter insertion on ships with greater than 25-foot freeboard, and Level 4, which is a contested boarding, the purview of special warfare operators.

“We train to a generic level,” Goodnoah said. “We can’t cover each and every scenario, but we do train to protect yourself and protect your buddy.”

Boarding team candidates spend a week on the gun range shooting the M9 pistol and the M4 carbine.

The VBSS course does not specifically address how to deal with pirates, as far as their tactics and methods. Instead, sailors are given standards that can be applied to any situation.

“In the context of Level 2 VBSS, we do not tailor it to dhows or ... dealing with pirates or ... to some place in the Straits of Malacca,” said Larry McFarland, director of training at CSF. “They get the generic tool set so when they are doing approaches and boardings on dhows, or if they are off the Horn of Africa, they’ve got the basic skills so the unit can then launch that mission if it does look like it’s going to turn south.”

Cmdr. Mike Knapp, VBSS program manager at CSF, said sailors are taught “escalation of force.”

“You teach them how to self-protect, both themselves and their buddies, and how to react quickly if something crops up,” Knapp said. “It doesn’t happen every day. A lot of this is, ‘Go meet the [ship’s] master, look at his papers and move on to the next guy.’”

However, as sailors have learned, what appears to be a compliant boarding can quickly get ugly.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.