Thursday, June 11, 2009

Pirates of the Somalia - Live experiance

Today I will be sharing one thrilling story. You must be heard about the Somalian pirates these days. They are all over in the Gulf of Aden area, targeting the cargo ship. They are just coming in speed boats with Bazooka and get into the cargo ship by threatening to blow them up with Bazooka. After that sometimes they are just going away after robbing the ship, sometimes they are taking the sailors as hostage and claiming for Ransom. My next story is related to this only. My brother is a marine engineer and he is now sailing in a cargo ship. He often communicates with me through email. Quite a few times I got email from him stating that they were crossing the dangerous Gulf of Aden area. That’s part of their job so they can’t even oppose. The only good thing is they are getting paid an amount by the company. Anyway, from the day Navy ships from different countries are patrolling the pirate prone zone, the pirates are pushed back. Still the threat is always there. This is what I realized when I got the last email from my brother 3 days back. It was written in Bengali, I am just quoting him here in English.

Dear Raja,
Today’s news update from my ship ------------------------
Today we crossed Gulf of Eden and just entered Red Sea. Since a few days back one attack took place here on a chemical ship, anti-piracy drill is going on here. It was decided that a Japanese Frigette will escort us to the next port. So we reduced our ship’s speed to 12 knot just to maintain the same speed as the convoy. There was two Frigette, one is leading the way then second was just behind us. One helicopter was also in the entire convoy. But after that all of a sudden we got a news that we got cargo in another Italian port (Savona), so to get that cargo we have to reach there early. So we increase speed and left the convoy. Now we are running in full speed (20 Knot). Today morning at 4-00 AM a tanker was attacked which is just ahead of us (15 min from our position), How do I know this? My Captain heard their message when they were trying to contact the coalition force in radio. Still we don’t know the end result. As we have not heard anything else, guess that they are safe. After that at around 8-00 AM an alarm is raised that there are two suspicious boats in the left side of port. But we kept Vigil, and there was no incident. Still we are not completely safe. I think some more anxious moments are still waiting for us. This time we are really really scared. Hope everything will be fine.
Cya

For me it was tough time until unless I got his next email that he is safe.

2 comments:

Abhi said...

That was scary. Is you brother safe now? Did you get the next email from him?

Kaustav Banerjee said...

Yes I got an email from him yesterday. They are safe now