Hostages recall Somali pirate attacks, good manners

By Andrew Cawthorne

MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - The water was still, the sky cloudless and the 12-man crew, Kenyans and Sri Lankans, were relaxed after their Sunday morning cup of tea in February last year as they returned from taking food aid to north Somalia.

Then they spotted a speck on the horizon and saw it get bigger. Suddenly realizing that a boat was heading right at them, they changed course and put the throttle down.

After an hour-long chase, the pirates' "mother ship" dropped two fiberglass speedboats which raced up alongside. Each held half a dozen young Somalis armed with pistols, machineguns and rocket-launchers.

The terrified sailors rushed to the bridge and held their hands high in surrender as the pirates hooked a metal ladder on the side and boarded, firing one warning shot.

"They said 'don't be frightened, you are just poor people like us, we won't kill anyone unless you disobey us'," recounted Kenyan mariner James Sambi, who asked for a false name to be used in case of repercussions with employers.

And so, in a case typical of a long-running phenomenon only now gaining world attention, began a 42-day saga that ended when the owner of the U.N.-contracted ship paid a hefty ransom.

Pirates have been preying on boats in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean ever since Somalia descended into anarchy in 1991.

But the rate and scale of attacks has increased dramatically this year, notably with the capture last weekend of a Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million worth of oil.

Lost behind the headlines about ransom negotiations, increased insurance premiums and valuable cargoes are the tales of seamen, most from developing countries and some earning as little as $100 a month, caught up in the hijackings.

Kenyan sailors interviewed by Reuters painted a picture of initially loud, gun-wielding, threatening pirates, who very quickly treated their captives with relative decency.

The hijackers of Sambi's ship even brought a live goat on board the first day, slaughtering it and sharing the meat. On the second day, they allowed each sailor to send a text message from a satellite telephone to loved ones.

"We are captured but I am ok. I will be back," was Sambi's message to his mother and father.

GUNFIRE AND JOKES

When authorities from Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland province sent boats to apprehend the ship, the pirates put their hostages on deck as a human shield. "They told the coastguard they would kill us, but whispered to us not to worry and to keep our heads down," Sambi said.

Another day, while anchored off the pirate village of Eyl, word went round that U.S. forces were about to storm the ship -- so all but four of the pirates fled.