Piracy Returns to the Open Seas Off Western Europe

Ship disappears after sail through English Channel

Aug 12 2009

(AP Photo/Pekka Laakso/Lehitukuva)

The cargo ship the Arctic Sea, a Maltese-flagged cargo ship, was supposed to make port in Algeria with a cargo of timber on August 4. As if by magic, more than a week later, there has been no sign of the ship or its Russian crew.

The mystery deepened when the ship reported it had been attacked off the coast of Sweden. But then, it apparently sailed unnoticed through the English Channel. Then it disappeared. Shades of Davy Jone's Locker.

Recently, there has been an outbreak of piracy off the coast of Western Africa, as rogue pirates from the virtually lawless nation of Somalia, have boarded ships of all descriptions and made off with millions of dollars of cargo being shipped around the world.

The mystery dates to late July, when 15 crew members of the Arctic Sea said they were tied up and beaten by a group of up to 10 men who boarded the ship off the Swedish island of Oland. The masked men identified themselves as police officers, but Swedish police said they hadn't been searching ships in that area.

The crew members then claimed the attackers had left the ship in a high-speed inflatable boat, without explanation.

On July 28, the Arctic Sea contacted British maritime authorities as it passed through the busy English Channel. The ship made a routine, mandatory report and apparently sailed through the Channel without incident. A spokesman for the British authority said the agency was very curious about what happened to the ship.

"It's bizarre," he said. "There is no coastguard I know who can remember anything like this happening."

Where the ship was next spotted is uncertain. Russian media reports say the last contact was on July 30 when the ship was in the Bay of Biscay, and that it was later spotted by a Portuguese patrol plane, but there was no contact.

But Portuguese Navy spokesman Commander Joao Barbosa said "we can guarantee that the ship is not in Portuguese waters nor did it ever pass through Portuguese waters."

Experts are very concerned about the vessel and crew, but at the same time are wary of attributing the disappearance to armed bandits.

Nick Davis, the chief executive of the Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre, told the BBC that if anything had happened to the ship, cargo would have been found. Davis found it more likely that the incident involved a commercial dispute between the owner and a third party and someone decided to resolve the matter privately.

At the time of writing this report the ship's disappearance remained a mystery.