Anything but a ride at Disneyland

Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas 

By John S. Burnett 

ISBN: 0-525-94679-9

This was a frightening read eight years ago and it's still unfortunately quite relevant. It was also a necessary one for me to read at the time as it solidified my determination to skip the Red Sea and selected parts of Indonesian waters in any future cruising plans and has proven prophetic in terms of how bad things have got. The more recent The Pirates of Somalia (review here) is a more current and specific companion piece, but Dangerous Waters shows the macro picture of how the pirating of international shipping is happening...still...elsewhere. 

The author, a long-time and experienced yachtsman and former merchantman, takes as his start point his own first-hand experience with piracy a decade ago and explains how this nefarious trade has exploded in certain crucial parts of the world and may well represent a terroristic as well as an economic threat to the law-abiding countries of the world.

Burnett’s own pirate encounter could have been nastier, but it was sufficiently disturbing to spark a interest in the topic that now, as his book demonstrates, seems encyclopedic. The author chooses to focus on South-east Asia, particularly the heavily traveled Malacca Straits, Singapore and the northern coasts of Indonesia. He makes a convincing case that assaults on merchant shipping, yachts and cruise liners, ranging from simple theft to full-blown hijackings and murder, are an increasing and increasingly dangerous phenomenon that may soon feature a political element. If the image of two skyscrapers plummeting to the ground did not alarm First World citizenry, imagine the effect of an 1,100-foot long tanker laden with 300,000 tons of petroleum ramming at over 20 knots into a city’s waterfront. Catastrophic doesn’t begin to cover it, which is why Burnett’s book should be bedside reading for international security policymakers.

Burnett touches lightly on the opportunistic—and sometimes fatal—pirate attacks on sail cruisers and passenger ships, but his main focus is on cargo ships, particularly the massive oil, gas and bulk carriers that play so large a part in today’s “just-in-time” world economy. Burnett’s personal observations, made on several trips through known pirate waters, are that very few ships are secure from attack, and that today’s largely automated ships and scanty crews present few obstacles to sufficiently motivated pirates. Two-stroke outboards and bamboo ladders, homemade knives and the element of surprise frequently suffice to raid even the largest of supertankers. 

Lest the term “pirates” conjures up romantic notions of Robin Hood-like rascals, Burnett’s raw descriptions of shoeless village boys with machetes and attitude should shut them down quickly. Today’s pirates range from fisherman seizing the moment to highly organized, lavishly equipped and heavily armed international crime syndicates who can seize, repaint, reflag and empty of cargo any ship in a matter of hours. Unlikely as it may seem, many huge vessels “disappear” this way every year, and very few people outside the shipping industry acknowledge or even know of the extent of the problem. So-called “phantom ships” are subsequently used to transport illegal cargo such as drugs, arms and illegal immigrants. Burnett cites as part of this problem the simultaneously convoluted and lax rules regarding “flags of convenience” and the inadequacy of the “laws of the sea”, which leaves international waters essentially unpoliced, precisely because they belong to no one nation.

Burnett profiles the few and generally understaffed and underfunded locals in the region dedicated to fighting piracy, and they’re a tough and determined lot working against steep odds. Although there are signs that governments and the shipping industry are taking more effective steps to combat piracy, Burnett suggests that a lack of awareness of ship vulnerability is a large obstacle. Imagine, he posits, if a FedEx 747 were hijacked and taken to a foreign airfield. Vast military, police and governmental resources would be devoted to its immediate and safe recovery, and CNN would probably hire an F-18 to get “live footage”. And yet ships are attacked and sometimes stolen by the dozens every month, and no one wants, seemingly, to know.

This well-written and compelling book may change that yet.