IT'S NOT SAFE AT SEA

The Sirius Star is one of the world's newest, and biggest, supertankers. Like other modern Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), it cost about $150 million (BD56.56 million) to build and measures around 330 metres from bow to stern. It is, in the words of Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based US Naval Forces Fifth Fleet, roughly three times the size of an aircraft carrier.

So how come a vessel whose cargo is so substantial that its loss can cause the world oil price to jump by more than a dollar fall prey to a ragged band of Somali pirates who, in all probability, scrambled on board from a couple of fast launches? How could one of the biggest man-made objects on earth become the victim of yet another hijacking in the waters off east Africa, an area that has witnessed more than 90 such incidents this year alone (and which last week witnessed another, in the shape of a Hong Kong freighter called Delight)?

The short answer is: easily. Contrary to what many imagine, the deck of a fully charged VLCC will be barely 3.5 metres above the waterline. After hitching a ride on a similar vessel from Saudi Arabia to Singapore for his book on modern-day piracy, Dangerous Waters, the author and former merchant seaman John Burnett wrote: "Could pirates take over a ship this huge, this important? On a VLCC you are above the world; the idea of being boarded and attacked by pirates seems ludicrous and on this voyage I shared with the captain his sense of invincibility..."

But, the captain conceded and Burnett somewhat prophetically concluded, "laden with crude oil, it will be easy for pirates to take over this ship. They will come up from behind within the shadow of radar coverage and, attacking from the stern, the lowest point of the ship, they will throw their grappling hooks over the railings and scamper up the sides. Anyone standing on the bow of a fishing boat or a large speedboat could be up and over the railing of a VLCC in seconds. Perhaps we are not so invincible after all. Perhaps it is only a matter of time."

It gives Burnett no particular pleasure to have predicted precisely the fate of the Sirius Star more than five years ago. But piracy is widespread and, in some regions, very much on the rise. According to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), which collates the figures for both attempted and successful hijacks, there were 264 piracy attacks around the world in 2007. By September this year there had been 199. Many take place in what has up until now been considered the most dangerous area: the South China Sea, and the Malacca Strait between Indonesia and Malaysia. But the fastest-growing area is the Gulf of Aden, off wartorn and lawless Somalia and its breakaway region of Puntland, where the number of attacks doubled to 60 in 2007 and has soared to 92 so far this year.

The Somali brand of piracy is different to that practised in south-east Asia, says Peter Newton, a captain with the Danish shipping line Maersk, who was the victim of an attack in the early 1990s. "We were out of Singapore, bound for New Zealand," he recalls, "and well out of the area where we were considered at risk of a pirate attack, so I'd stood down the anti-piracy precautions we had in place as a matter of course. I'd just gone back down to my cabin and a couple of minutes later they simply walked in. It was a bit of a surprise."

Newton's first thought, he says, was that the crew had mutinied. "They were dressed in balaclavas, armed with machete-type knives, and their leader at least spoke excellent English," he says. "In fact, they were basically interested just in robbing me and the ship's safe. The whole thing was over in about 30 minutes. They slapped me around a bit and forced me to open the safe, which had an anti-tamper device fitted that, if it had been set, would have triggered an alarm. They made it perfectly clear they would shoot me if that happened. Fortunately, it didn't."

Newton reckons the vast majority of pirate robberies, particularly in south-east Asia, are not even reported. "No shipping company likes to advertise that they've been the subject of an attack," he says, "because it's bad for their image. Plus, they're not even really bothered. The attack on my vessel netted a grand total of $24,000. The ship itself costs around $50,000 a day to charter."

Somalia is a different story. The Somali gangs, armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers and operating often from a "mother ship" from which they launch fast, high-powered skiffs, are interested not so much in robbery as ransom. Of the 90-plus attacks carried out so far this year, 36 were hijackings.

Around 500 crew members have been taken hostage and an estimated $30 million paid out in ransom for the captured ships, their cargo, officers and crew. One of the most spectacular operations was against a luxury French three-masted yacht, Le Ponant, whose 32 passengers and crew were taken captive (and eventually ransomed) in April. At least 14 vessels are thought still to be held. And the pirates seem undeterred by a couple of high-profile operations by French special forces, or the presence in the area of a multinational task force including American, Russian, Danish and British warships.

In that, says writer Adrian Tinniswood, who is writing a book on the Barbary coast corsairs of the 17th century, they are descended pretty much in a direct line from their forebears. While the corsairs operated from modern-day Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, and although many of the most fearsome among them were actually renegade Europeans (including a particularly notorious and bloodthirsty captain called Yusuf Rais, who was actually a fisherman from Faversham by the name of John Ward), "they used very much the same tactics", says Tinniswood.

"Like their modern equivalents, the Barbary coast pirates relied on fast boats and fear to overcome their prey," he adds. "Their aim, of course, was to capture the cargoes and sell, rather than ransom, the crew, which was a considerably worse fate. Not a lot of people know that in the 17th century one million Europeans were sold into slavery in Africa; the vast majority had been captured by pirates. More than 150 English ships were hijacked, and James I went so far as to call the Barbary corsairs 'the common enemy of mankind'."

This is the first time, though, that today's pirates have attacked anything as vast as a VLCC, or indeed any vessel quite so far from their home bases - the Sirius Star was several hundred miles out to sea, about 700km from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. Jim Wilson, Middle East correspondent of the shipping weekly Fairplay, says the attack "marks a significant step up in the confidence and capability of Somali pirates to attack shipping. It may also mark the effect of increased anti-pirate naval activity in the Gulf of Aden".

Commodore Keith Winstanley, deputy commander of the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) in the Middle East, told the magazine: "It's inconceivable that (the CMF) can be everywhere. The pirates will go somewhere we are not. If we patrol the Gulf of Aden then they will go to Mogadishu. If we go to Mogadishu, they will go to the Gulf of Aden."

Burnett, for one, is not surprised. "The great fallacy is that because ships this size are nine storeys tall, they're impregnable," he says. "In fact, they're sitting ducks. These are the softest targets, the lowest-hanging fruit of the whole of world maritime commerce."

Newton agrees. "The thing about a VLCC," he says, "is that its size actually lets it down because it's so slow. This vessel was probably only doing about 15 knots, which would have made it easy prey for almost any reasonably speedy launch. Once they've reached it, it's a relatively easy task to board because the freeboard is so low. What impresses me, though, is the fact that they found it: they'd obviously been tracking it electronically, because succeeding in making a rendezvous with another vessel in open sea so far offshore is exceptionally difficult."

Once they had located and approached it, though, Newton says, the Sirius Star would have been considered "pretty much a risk-free operation" by the pirates. First, he says, the crew would not have put up a fight. "Maybe a European professional crew might have tried, but the pirates know full well that a civilian crew from the Philippines, from Russia or Croatia will not really resist."

Nor, even if the crew of a supertanker was attempting to guard against a pirate attack, could it actually do so. The Sirius Star, with its crew of 25, would have probably six deckhands, Newton points out. "Assuming one guy can be expected to survey maybe a 100-metre stretch of deck, on a carrier the size of this your entire deck crew would be permanently engaged in looking out for a possible attack," he says. "That's plainly impractical."

The suggestion, floated in the wake of the latest hijacking, that crews might in future be armed is equally unworkable, Newton argues. "Carrying weapons is very, very problematic. If I'm on board ship I'm bound by exactly the same rules and laws as you are in an office. We can't carry knives or any other kind of weapon. The problem is, if you're an armed security guard on land you're not going to find yourself in a different country in a few weeks' time. Can you imagine a merchant ship arriving in a foreign port with half its crew armed to the teeth? It's just not going to happen."

Against an increasingly professional and determined foe, then, what is the answer? Jonathan Davies, senior security instructor at the Maersk Training Centre, has taught a course called Spar - Surviving Piracy and Armed Robbery - for the past three years, and says his sessions are currently "extremely well subscribed: the problem with piracy is becoming more and more significant. It's becoming an extremely alarming problem."

As well as giving seafarers the psychological tools to reduce post-traumatic stress following any eventual attack, Davies says standard advice on avoiding one includes manoeuvring the ship rapidly and, if possible, unpredictably (difficult when, as in the case of a VLCC, it can take minutes between a command being given on the bridge and the vessel actually changing direction); operating the ship's fire hoses, basically to "dissuade pirates from boarding by demonstrating that the crew is alert"; deploying search and deck lights with a similar aim; and even "swamping the would-be boarders' boat".

But ultimately, industry insiders concede, it is extremely difficult for any ship to avoid an attack by well-armed, well-prepared, resolute attackers. A major part of the problem, says Newton, is that the shipowners themselves are curiously uninterested. "They're fully covered by insurance," he says. "Even if, heaven forbid, a crew member is killed, there'll be a $5,000 life insurance payout which will be something like 20 times the average annual salary in the Philippines."

There are certainly measures they could take. "You can install CCTV on deck," says Newton. "You can fit special radar equipment to pick small craft coming in from astern - normal radar looks forward, of course, which is why it misses most pirate launches. You could even look at forming convoys of vessels with a naval escort, although that would be horrendously complicated and prohibitively expensive."

Eventually, the experts believe, the insurance companies will force some kind of change.

Premiums in the Gulf of Aden have increased tenfold in recent months and insurers may soon demand something is done, Newton says.

At present, however, no one in the shipping community seems to have any idea of what that something might be other than destroying the pirates' infrastructure and, if necessary, killing or capturing the pirates themselves.

Burnett is even more pessimistic, believing the only long-term and lasting solution will be "a stable and bona fide" government in Somalia. Which is not what you might call around the corner.