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TIME TO TOOL UP AND TAKE BACK OUR SEAS

We must draw the criminals to the guns

Friday November 21,2008

By Frederick Forsyth

THE pirates are back. Out of the ports of Somalia come sea raiders armed to the teeth in fast boats and with amazing skill to intercept, board, capture and hold hostage ships, crews and cargoes daring to come anywhere near their coast.

The US Navy, the Royal Navy, the French and even the Russians have been ordered to try to stop them.

Despite all our modern technology, old Horatio Nelson would have understood perfectly.

You see, the Royal Navy has a lot of "previous" when it comes to pirates. For centuries the Mediterranean was an extremely dangerous place for an unarmed merchantman due to the infestation of Barbary Coast (North Africa) pirates. It was the Royal Navy and later the French who wiped them out.

After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 the Royal Navy patrolled the Middle Passage (central Atlantic) intercepting European and American slavers. We had abolished slavery; they had not.

The slaves were freed and set ashore to found Sierra Leone, the vessels con"scated, the captains and owners livid. We nearly got into several new wars over that honourable policy.

IN THE Far East the Royal Navy wiped out (for a while . . .they also are back) the pirates of the South China Sea. Now the Malacca and Sunda Straits are again a menace to unarmed shipping but the Somali corsairs, with their capture of the vast Saudi tanker, have established a new benchmark.

Thirty years ago I wrote a novel called The Devil's Alternative about the capture by terrorists of a ULCC (ultra-large crude carrier). It was a warning but no one took any notice.

These leviathans are incredibly vulnerable and their cargoes, if vented, a disaster waiting to happen.

However, already it is clear that the forces of law and order are losing . . . and they will go on losing.

They will always be too late.

The sea off Africa is too vast, the merchantmen too umerous, the obsession with the pirates' civil rights too pathetic. (Nelson never bothered with things like that! ) The only way to win is to draw the criminals to the guns rather than be constantly chasing after them trying to ransom back captured hostages.

The answer lies in Q-ships, like we used in both world wars. A Q-ship masquerades as a dozy old merchantman or tanker but under canvas deck structures that vanish in the blink of an eye are the rapid"re Oerlikons. Under the rusty decks are the Marine Commandos.

Sink the 10th Somali pirate ship with all hands and they will "nd another way to earn a crust.