Posted: Jul 02, 2009 05:01 am EST
(TheOceans.net) In the old days, solo sailors would strew thumbtacks on deck at night for a simple pirate alarm.

Wrapping the ship’s rails with barbed wire and razor blades, or having Molotov cocktails ready to throw at the speedboats are other good tactics.

However, leisure and adventure sailors have little to fear from Somali pirates. These guys are not poor fishermen out to get your beer and woman.

Cosa Nostra

Organized in traditional mob-business model Somali pirates target well researched cargo ships likely to bring out a handsome ransom. Others profiting are insurance companies and "security firms."

Intelligence is gathered from a network stretching all the way from Europe. Local war clans and millitant muslim organizations act as "investors" bagging half of the average $1-2 million (or less) ransoms.

According to a recent Wired mag article, an Aden pirate attack costs $30,000 but only one in 3-4 missions are lucky. In 2008, a mere 0,2% of the vessels were successfully attacked; which made the deal profitable also for insurance companies who simply raised policies. Security firms, made up mostly of former military personnel, arrange the ransom exchange at a fee of about 10%.

Somalia is operated by clans and its equally lawless waters are patrolled by the very "coast guard" stealing the ships. “The pirates operate out of the Puntland and they refer to the place where they dock the boats they steal as the ’garage’,” says Ross Kemp who investigates the work and life of the pirates.

One of the pirates told Ross that there are 30 training camps for sea piracy and that the trainers are former marines. Yet the footmen live the simple life of any mobster staff: it's easy, it's lucrative, and it's for life:

A pirate’s wife told Ross that all the pirates’ wives worry and comfort each other when their husbands go off to work. If a pirate is captured, he is mostly taken back to the country where he comes from, which means he’ll end up with a clan that will take him back into piracy, or he will end up with a clan that will kill him.

Common sense

It's not personal - it's only business: the pirates don’t want to hurt anybody. And how high-tech it all might seem; fending them off still comes down to common water sense.

On sky.com Ross explained that the essential things pirate needs are a boat, information on the ships’ cargo and a way of accessing the vessels, like ladders.

Speaking in a YouTube video series onboard the British Navy vessel patrolling the Gulf of Aden, HMS Northumberland, the Captain told Ross that pirates prefer a calm sea state to operate in, because it makes it easier for them to board a merchant vessel. Slow vessels with a low free board (the distance from the water to the deck) where pirates can put a ladder on have been targets so far.

Ross Kemp investigates the work and life of gangs over the world. He has shifted his attention from land gangs to sea gangs – the pirates. Recently he interviewed pirates and spent time with the British Navy patrolling the Gulf of Aden.

Somalia is one of the poorest countries on earth. Many Somali pirates were fisherman who started guarding their shores against foreign trawlers taking advantage of the civil war to illegally fish the Somali waters. The foreign trawlers devastated the livelihoods of the local fishermen. When the international community did nothing, the fishermen became pirates after discovering that taking hostages was fruitful.

This led to a well-organized sea jacking business. “Mother ships” take the pirates out to the open seas and put them on skiffs to capture a vessel and find their way back to land.

Hundreds of attacks have been reported around the coast of Somalia and in particular in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s busiest sea-lanes.

After a hijacking a ship is usually taken to anchor offshore the ungoverned coast of Somalia and a ransom is demanded from the ship owners. On receiving the ransom the crew and the vessels are returned unharmed.

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