Pre-Ramble: Of all the things on my list of Things to Worry About, pirate attacks has never been one of them – which is why the recent hijacking attempts in the Indian Ocean are so unfathomable. Who would think that in this day and age, a scenario which has largely been the stuff of backyard games and blockbuster Hollywood movies is actually a very real threat to the safety of international shipping crews on the other side of the world?

Just last week, the cargo ship, Maersk Alabama, was carrying 4,100 tons of corn soya and 990 tons of vegetable oil to the Kenyan port of Mombasa as food aid for children in Uganda and Somalia when it was attacked by pirates.  The ship’s captain, Richard Phillips, valiantly offered himself in exchange for the safe release of the crew. The entire world watched as the situation played itself out; the U.S. Navy, Navy SEALS teams, the FBI, and General Petraeus were involved, culminating in a heart-stopping rescue just yesterday.  

According to the International Maritime Bureau, pirate attacks have been on the rise, topping 190 attacks in the Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean since 2007. The very informative Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope, suggests that piracy had it’s golden age in the early 1700′s when thousands of pirates terrorized ships on the Atlantic Ocean. Adams cites fictional references including Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and James Barrie’s Peter Pan which have influenced the modern take on pirates, generating ”the pirate genre’s most durable cliches” including the eye patch, hooks, peg legs, parrots on shoulders, skull-and-crossbones, walking the plank, treasure maps marked with an “X,” and pirate jargon such as “arrrr,” bly-me,” and “shiver me timbers.”  

So, here we are in the 21st Century — how do pirate attacks even happen?  Having grown up on the Great Lakes of Michigan, I’ve seen my share of shipping channels and I can tell you that ocean liners are TALL. Boarding a small boat that is secured to a dock is tough enough — it can only be tougher to scale one of these formidable vessels out on the open seas (it’s not like they are dragging a swim ladder).

And, in the case of the Maersk Alabama, they really didn’t think the whole thing through. I would have liked to have been a parrot on a shoulder in that planning meeting. After all the hardship, what did they think the pay-off would be?  It’s not like that cargo hold was going to be filled with piles of gold coins and loose diamonds. Between the corn and the cooking oil, at the end of the day the only thing they had coming was a life supply of tortillas. 

The Take-Away:  My intent is not to make light of Captain Phillips’ recent ordeal, but rather to explore my curiousity around this particular event and highlight its relative absurdity in contrast to my comparatively uneventful suburban life. It was useful to me to consider the very real pirate scenario in some kind of context. This story was just so bizarre – as if no person deserved to be in a situation that was so dangerous and wrong, and so … fictional.  Also, it was easy to root for the side of “good” here. Far from the literary stereotype or “romanticized, swashbuckling adventurer,” (Adams) David Cordingly characterizes the reality of piracy on the high seas in Under the Black Flag:

“Pirates were not maritime versions of Robin Hood and his merry men … their attacks were frequently accompanied by extreme violence, torture, and death.”

Those pirates were truly bad guys. Thankfully, Captain Phillips has been rescued — well deserving of the hero’s welcome that awaits him.

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