Hijacked On The High Seas-- Wall Street Journal
When Somali Pirates Attacked, They Kicked Off 56 Days of Drama Over the Fate of a Ship and 28 Crewmen.
A few hours after dawn on the Friday after Thanksgiving, a speedboat carrying five men with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades raced toward a massive tanker in the Gulf of Aden. They fired at the ship as they approached, denting the hull.
The skinny, barefoot men wearing T-shirts and shorts hitched an aluminum ladder to the railing and scampered up to the deck. They shot through a window of the bridge, which the crew had locked. The ship's captain hit the distress button.
At 12:05 a.m. that day, James Christodoulou awoke to the ringing of the bedside phone in his New Jersey apartment. Pirates had captured his company's tanker, the MV Biscaglia, a company security official told him.
"Say that again?" Mr. Christodoulou replied.
The news thrust the 48-year-old chief executive of Industrial Shipping Enterprises Corp., a tiny Stamford, Conn.-based company, and the crew of 28 men onto the front lines of a rash of piracy targeted at huge ships sailing off the coast of Somalia en route to the Suez Canal.
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More News On Somali Piracy
Nine countries sign deal to fight Somali piracy -- AFP
Who do pirates call to get their cash? -- BBC
Japan Puts Warships on Notice for Somalia Piracy Deployment -- Voice Of America
French navy hands over nine suspected pirates to Somali authorities -- China View
Pirate Attacks Cut Dramatically by Navies, U.S. Admiral Says -- Bloomberg
Backgrounder: Combating Maritime Piracy -- New York Times
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