A pirate’s tale

The details are chilling, a cruiser’s nightmare: Passengers on the luxury cruise ship Seabourn Spirit, sailing from Egypt to Kenya, were awoken by pirates who attacked the ship with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

The ship outran the attackers, but could that Nov. 5 incident 100 miles off the coast of Somalia portend a terrifying new threat for cruise passengers?

In the first nine months of 2005, pirates attacked 251 ships worldwide, taking 259 hostages – 12 of whom are still missing, according to the International Maritime Bureau, which tracks piracy reports. The most treacherous waters are off the coasts of Indonesia and Somalia.

But all of those attacks involved freighters and cargo ships. Cruise ships are unlikely targets because they ride high above the water and have large crews, said Brian Major of the Cruise Line International Association, a trade group in New York.

“You’re going to pull alongside a 430-foot-long cruise ship riding high in the water in a 25-foot inflatable boat, and then what?” says Seabourn spokesman Bruce Good. “It seems like these guys didn’t think it through too well.”

The Washington Post