They hold it for ransom from the owner or insurance company.
The problem with attacking them is the hostages.

The ships are always held for ransom. Somalia has no refineries. No way to offload the oil. I don't even know if that port is deep enough for a tanker that deep.

A fleet of international warships operate a protective screen off Somalia. So how did they get this ship? They highjacked it off of Kenya. Also possible that warships never knew the highjacking occurred until that tanker was in a northern Somalian port.

Curious is the military comment on how professional these pirates are.

Pirates seize 7 ships in 12 days, latest from Iran

(AP:MOGADISHU, Somalia) Somali pirates hijacked their seventh ship in 12 days on Tuesday, as the U.S. Navy reported that pirates had seized an Iranian cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden. The status of the crew or the cargo was not known, she said.

Elsewhere, pirates anchored a hijacked Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million in crude oil off the Somali coast on Tuesday, causing residents in impoverished fishing villages to gawk in amazement at the size of the 1,080 foot (329 meter) tanker.

Pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia have surged recently, despite the presence of NATO ships, U.S. warships and a Russian frigate all working to prevent piracy in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

International Maritime Bureau on Sunday reported five hijackings since Nov. 7, before the hijackings of the Saudi ship or the Iranian ship were announced.

With few other options, shipowners in past piracy cases have ended up paying ransoms for their ships, cargoes and crew.

The U.S. and other naval forces decided against intervention for now. NATO said it would not divert any of its three warships from the Gulf of Aden and the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet also said it did not expect to send ships to try to intercept the Saudi supertanker, the MV Sirius Star. The tanker was seized over the weekend about 450 nautical miles off the Kenyan coast.

Never before have Somali pirates seized such a giant ship so far out to sea _ and never a vessel so large. The captors of the Sirius Star anchored the ship, with a full load of 2 million barrels of oil and 25 crew members, close to a main pirate den on the Somali coast, Harardhere.

~~~~~~~~~
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal called the hijacking "an outrageous act" and said "piracy, like terrorism, is a disease which is against everybody, and everybody must address it together."

Speaking during a visit to Athens on Tuesday, he said Saudi Arabia would join an international initiative against piracy in the Red Sea area, where more than 80 pirate attacks have taken place this year.

He did not elaborate on what steps the kingdom would take to better protect its vital oil tankers. Saudi Arabia's French-equipped navy has 18,000-20,000 personnel, but has never taken part in any high-seas fighting.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian shipping group Odjell SE said it ordered its more than 90 tankers to sail all the way around Africa to avoid the risk of attack by Somali pirates. That means ships will go past South Africa's Cape of Good Hope instead of taking the Suez Canal shortcut through the Gulf of Aden.

"We will no longer expose our crew to the risk of being hijacked and held for ransom by pirates in the Gulf of Aden," said Terje Storeng, Odjell's president and chief executive.

Experts say the much longer journey adds 12 to 15 days to a tanker's trip, at a cost of between $20,000-$30,000 a day.


The U.S. Navy is still surrounding a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other weaponry that was seized by pirates Sept. 25 off the Somali coast.

Sounds like they need to send some SEALs or other SOF to the area and screw those fellas like they have never been screwed before. It would really suck to be them if they took on a US flagged ship.

Instead they took a British crewed ship.

TW, the ship was owned by a Saudi company and registered in Liberia. There were two Brits on board. You're hearing about this precisely for that reason, via British media. The UK is almost as insular as the US (except our ties to mainland Europe).

Forget the other ships captured by pirates this year - this is headline news here because two Brits are working on board.

It's also news because it's been attacked away from the blockade in Somalia, and is off the coast of Kenya. But never believe it would have been in our newspapers if not for the two Brits.

Brother, I know the SAS. If they hit a Brit flagged ship it would be the last one they hit.

Now the numbers. I believe 30 ships per year are highjacked. A fleet of maybe five frigates (including one from Russia) are on patrol off Somalia.

Boy, you guys sure lost your enthusiasm since talk like a pirate day.

Has anyone (else) here read The Devil's Alternative, by Fredrick Forsyth? It deals with a hijacked super tanker.

Clearly, mere regular patrols aren't working. Counter-strikes against seized ships kill hostages and in this case would either destroy, or dump into the sea, a huge amount of oil.
Two tactical responses seem like they might work: providing escorts for ships in convoy, or setting a few decoy/sting ships that look like nice easy targets but turn out to have, say, a whole commando regiment on board.

Pirates hijack another

The Indian Navy scores a mothership

Johnny Depp does a few popular movies about pirates. Now everybody wants to be one.

As ill-equipped as Somali pirates are, a commando raid on the Sirius Star would doubtless get it back. Once the ship has been retaken, there will be very damned little anyone in Somalia could do about it, and a marine diesel engine is quicker to start than a steam turbine powerplant. The cost of mounting such an effort and getting it on-target would probably be about what ransoming the vessel and crew would be -- with substantial added benefits. too readily imagined to need recapitulating here.

The vessel is not loaded with anything remarkably volatile: it's about half to two thirds loaded with crude oil, which is no easier to light off than diesel. The likelihood of the ship being wired for demolition charges seems to me small.

And if the Somali pirates find they can't use crewmen as human shields to any effect to keep the ship, it will discourage them. In general, the only reason the Somali pirates are having the successes they're gaining is because merchant shipping is even worse equipped, and even less trained, for fighting than the Somalis.

I think the Somalis should be discouraged.

I'm not keen on Ethiopia taking over Somalia to restore order -- but the reason Ethiopia has that big horn-shape into that general area in its southeast is because Ethiopia, of all countries, took it away from Somalia back in the day. They are, well, available, and local, and so would have a deeper local understanding. It's probably as true, though, that Ethiopia isn't all that keen on it either, having shall we say a remarkably small merchant marine and thus not being much affected by Somali depredation.

UG, I wish you hadn't posted that.

All Somali pirates read the Cellar.

Yeah, dammit, the cellar hunting trip was just a cover. We were going to go in tonight to take them out, until you blew it. Good one. ;)

Loose lips sink ... er ... fail to liberate ... ships.