Captain Ken #39 - Piracy on the High Seas
Captain Ken Owen had a long career at sea which included sailing as master with Overseas Containers Limited (OCL), P&O Containers and P&O Nedlloyd. Ken is now retired and in 2020 he started writing a monthly article for publication using the pen name 'Captain Ken' in the Mellor Church Outlook magazine.
A number of articles that Ken has written are about his time at sea and he has very kindly agreed that we can share them here. This is the 38th article in the Captain Ken series published here on the PONL Heritage website, and it was written shortly after the death of Prince Philip on 9 April 2021. Ken recalls some occasions time when he met the Prince, then husband of the HRH Queen Elizabeth II.
(This article was first published in the December 2023 edition of the Mellor Church Outlook Magazine).
When I first went to sea, in the early fifties, like most boys of my age, I was intrigued to know that off the coast of China there were still pirates operating.
While visiting Hong Kong, I remember noticing that the Butterfield and Swire coastal China Navigation ships, which, in those days, served the Chinese ports, had very strong defences protecting their bridges and accommodation blocks. This was to prevent pirates hiding amongst the deck passengers, taking control of the ship.
When Mau Tse Tung's Navy gained control of the coastal waters the Chinese pirates were unable to operate.
Shipping worldwide increased massively, and general cargo ships gave way to huge container ships while tankers grew bigger and bigger.
It was in the late eighties when I was captain of a very large container ship when I was horrified to learn that a great friend and colleague of mine, commanding a sister ship, had been boarded and robbed just clear of the Singapore Straits.
The pirate had gained access to his quarters while the ship was in Singapore, then waited until the ship sailed towards Hong Kong. Several hours later the captain handed the control of the ship to the duty officer and left the bridge returning to his room where the pirate was waiting.
Armed with a knife, the pirate forced my friend to open the ship's safe and then in complete darkness took the contents over the side and into his own launch which had followed the ship into the China Sea.
Instances such as this were becoming more and more frequent but much more serious with whole ships being taken and crew members being killed. This prompted me to write the accompanying letter to the Sunday Telegraph, which I am delighted to report did seem to have some affect (the illustration was of the Sunday Telegraph's choice).
SIR - What could better highlight the atrocious piracy situation at present than Captain Philip Beale's letter (December 6) sent from the Indian Ocean? He is navigating his replica sailing ship following the same route the Phoenicians took 2,500 years ago, but appears to have found pirates more hazardous than they ever were then. Recently, the International Transport Federation declared the Indian Ocean as "unfit for seafarers". The International Chamber of Shipping stated that the current level of threat to the industry was unacceptable and could not be allowed to continue. Since early last year, more than 250 ships have been attacked, over 70 hijacked, 1,300 seafarers taken hostage and several killed.
The few international naval ships trying to guard the merchant shipping are hamstrung by the very size of the area to patrol and with restrictive terms of engagement, favouring the human rights of the pirates over that of the seafarers.
Governments are too immersed in the climate-change debate, worrying economics and the Afghanistan conflict to pay sufficient attention, and the merchant seafarer's concern is that as insurance rates escalate, the piracy they face will simply become included with "perils of the sea" and forgotten.
Captain Ken Owen,
High Peak, Derbyshire
The date my letter was published in the Sunday Telegraph was 13th Dec. 2009 and it wasn't long after that that ships were provided with ex-Army sharp shooter guards, which soon largely solved the problem.
Captain Ken Owen's articles are being published on a regular basis here but if you are interested in reading others that he has written which we haven't yet used then please feel free to go to https://mellorchurch.org/information/outlook/.
17/09/2024