Somalia: US destroyer set to intervene against pirates

CounterVortex

A Navy missile destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, has arrived to help end an ongoing standoff between four Somali pirates and their American hostage off the east coast of Somalia. The hostage, the captain of the container ship, the Maersk Alabama, is being held captive in a lifeboat after a hijacking attempt early April 8.

After the Alabama’s 20 American crew members managed to wrest control of the ship back from the pirates later Wednesday, they initially detained one of the pirates. The NATO Shipping Centre reports that the crew “returned their hostage [sic] to the pirates, hoping the pirates would give back the captain of the ship… but this was not the case.”

News agencies report the captain being held hostage as Richard Phillips of Vermont. According to the Lloyd’s Register-Fairplay shipping news web site, the pirates are “conducting ransom negotiations with a satellite telephone.” Maersk Line Limited, the US-based owner and operator of the ship, said in a statement that they are “working closely with the US military and other government agencies” to resolve the standoff.

The Alabama is carrying food aid and supplies to the port city of Mombasa, Kenya. The Alabama’s hijacking by pirates was the sixth this week. The NATO Shipping Centre reports two more ships, including a Yemeni fishing boat and a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier, have been attacked in the region. (AllAfrica.com, April 9)

Whether it is a coincidence or not, the USS Bainbridge is evidently names after William Bainbridge, an early US naval commander who twice had his own ship seized by North African pirates (more correctly, corsairs) in the Barbary Wars of 1800-1805.

See our last post on Somalia and the pirates.

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  1. AMERICAN CAPTAIN HELD HOSTAGE
    DOESN’T AMERICAN WARSHIPS HAVE DIVERS ABOARD?
    IF SO, WHY DON’T THE DIVERS SWIM TO THE RAFT IN THE DARK,
    WITH A PLANNED RESCUE MISSION? GRAB THE CAPTAIN AND PULL
    HIM BACKWARD AND THE OTHER DIVERS FROM UNDERNEATH THE
    RAFT PUSH THE PIRATES IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION INTO THE WATER?
    SWIM LIKE THE DEVIL WITH THE CAPTAIN IN THE OPPOSITE
    DIRECTION AND THE REMAINING DIVERS SHOOT THE PIRATES.
    WHY ARE WE SITTING THERE WITH AN X-TON WARSHIP WITH A
    CREW OF 350 WATCHING A LIFE RAFT WITH 3 PIRATES AND OUR
    CAPTAIN. AND, TO ADD INSULT, WONDER WHAT OTHER COUNTRIES
    WOULD THINK OF US. GO TO HELL IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT!
    WHEN ARE WE AMERICANS GOING TO STAND UP FOR OUR OWN
    AND TELL THE WORLD BE DAMNED!

    1. I THINK WE HEARD THAT
      Writing in all caps certainly adds weight to your arguments. Perhaps the Pentagon should avail themselves of your obvious expertise.

  2. Somali pirate update
    Adrift with his captors in sight of US warships, Richard Phillips, the American sea captain being held by Somali pirates briefly escaped their lifeboat by jumping overboard, but was recaptured. (LAT, April 10) French troops that day stormed a yacht that had been hijacked almost a week ago off Somalia, killing three pirates and arresting another two. Four hostages, including a child, were freed but a fifth was killed in the operation. (Radio Netherlands, April 10) Pirates also attempted to hijack a North Korean-flagged freighter in the Gulf of Aden, but were repulsed by the crew. (AllAfrica, April 10)

  3. Barbary redux?
    Jake Tapper in his ABC News Political Punch of April 9 blog makes note of the Bainbridge connection:

    The Namesake of the USS Bainbridge
    An interesting historical note — the destroyer sent out to engage with the Somali pirates, the USS Bainbridge, was named after William Bainbridge, a Navy Commodore known in no small way for having to deal with pirates.

    In 1800, then-Captain Bainbridge was given command of the frigate George Washington and delivered tribute to the Dey of Algiers so as to keep Barbary pirates from raiding American shipping vessels.

    Bainbridge is said to have found the job distasteful, but he did it anyway.

    By 1801, President Thomas Jefferson had decided that war against the Barbary pirates was a better course than continued tributes and the First Barbary War began (1801-1805).

    Bainbridge was appointed commander of the Essex, cruising with other US Naval vessels and fighting the North African Barbary pirates.

    He had some successes — capturing the Moorish warship Mesh-Boha and recapturing an America ship, the Celica.

    But in 1803, after Bainbridge — all of 29 years old — had been assigned command of the 36-gun frigate Philadelphia in the Mediterranean, his ship ran aground just outside the harbor of Tripoli.

    He surrendered and was imprisoned, along with his men, for 19 months. It was a humiliation.

    But his career rebounded and after the War of 1812, he led a squadron against the Barbary pirates in the Second Barbary War (1815-1816).

    Click on the link for more sources on the Barbary Wars.

  4. Pirates vow revenge
    Capt. Phillips is free following an impressively executed Navy SEALS operation—and the pirates are vowing vengeance. From AP, April 12:

    Somali pirates on Monday vowed to retaliate for the deaths of three colleagues who were shot dead by U.S. Navy snipers hours before in a daring nighttime assault that freed a 53-year-old American captain.

    The Navy Seals late Sunday rescued freighter Capt. Richard Phillips, who had been held by pirates on a lifeboat that drifted in the Indian Ocean for five days.

    “Every country will be treated the way it treats us,” said Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding a Greek ship anchored in the pirate den of Gaan, a central Somali town.

    “In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying,” he told The Associated Press by telephone. “We will retaliate for the killings of our men.”

    Meanwhile, Somali pirates are holding about a dozen ships with more than 200 crew members, according to the Malaysia-based International Maritime Bureau. The hostages are from Bulgaria, China, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, the Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, Tuvalu and Ukraine, among other countries. (AP, April 12)