The 650 passengers sailing a world cruise on the Tahitian Princess last week took part in an unusual drill before crossing the Gulf of Aden. Along with the crew, they were given a lesson on what to do in the event of a pirate attack.
The Gulf of Aden, the body of water between Somalia and Yemen, is the only southern entry to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, and these days it is a hotbed of piracy, with attackers lying in wait for victim vessels.
The Tahitian Princess, which safely made the crossing, followed by its sister ship the Royal Princess days later, are two of several cruise vessels making annual repositioning cruises this season from Asia to the Mediterranean. The Princess ships were to be followed by the Costa Victoria and the Seabourn Spirit later in the week.
The crossings coincide with a recent upswing in pirate activity off the Horn of Africa, which became an issue for the U.S. when the crew of the Maersk Alabama, a U.S.-flagged cargo ship, was briefly commandeered by pirates two weeks ago. The dramatic incident was watched internationally, and after a three-day hostage standoff, three of the four pirates who attacked the tanker were killed by U.S. Navy snipers.
Since then, pirates have attacked at least four other ships, and the international military forces have responded in kind. Two pirates and a hostage were killed by the French navy as it freed a captured yacht. The French also captured 11 pirates days later when navy forces attacked a "mother ship," the vessels from which pirates launch smaller boats to attack ships far out at sea.
The recent attacks occurred off Somalia's coast, south of the Gulf of Aden, which is not a popular route for cruise ships.
But the gulf is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world and the site of more pirate attacks over the last five years than any other expanse of ocean.
In 2008 there were 92 actual and attempted pirate attacks in the gulf, compared with only 13 in 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau, which operates the Piracy Reporting Center.
Only two North American cruise ships have reported being attacked by pirates in the last five years, and in neither instance were the pirates able to board their targets.
Even so, cruise lines take the threat of piracy seriously, and several have either altered their routes to keep passengers out of pirate zones or, more often, are joining convoys to make the crossing. And like Princess, many are training their crews and passengers how to react in the event of a pirate attack.
Princess spokeswoman Karen Candy said that the crews have been trained to recognizing pirate vessels and to take evasive maneuvers when necessary.
She said there were "deterrents in place, and there are additional lookouts and deck patrols."
Regina McCloskey, a passenger on the Tahitian Princess, said that prior to entering the gulf, the ship's captain briefed the passengers on the procedures the crew was taking to ensure a safe passage, then had everyone participate in a drill on what to do if pirates were spotted heading toward the ship.
McCloskey, who related her experience via email from the Suez Canal, days after the ship had safely transited the area, said the passengers were told that the ship could fight pirates with long-range acoustic devices, which would hit the attackers with sonic blasts, and could also repel them with water from powerful fire hoses.
She said that during the crossing, the cruise ship joined a convoy of other vessels, which were met by two U.S. Navy destroyers as well as by a nearby submarine.
"Other ships showed up and traveled along with us," she said. "We felt the [Tahitian Princess] was ready for the situation and that [Princess] made all efforts to keep passengers safe."
Many cruise vessels are joining such convoys in the eight-mile-wide, 550-mile-long Maritime Safety Protection Area, a corridor close to the coast of Yemen that is patrolled by the Combined Maritime Forces, a task force of European Union, NATO and other international navies that help patrol the region.
Because Seabourn had to change the Spirit's itinerary slightly in order to join a convoy, it will skip a scheduled call at Salalah, Oman.
Stephanie Murdock, a media operations officer with the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain, said that on average there were 12 to 16 coalition and non-coalition warships patrolling the area at any given time.
Traveling in convoys enables the military to keep tabs on more ships at once.
"Due to the magnitude of the problem, we still can't be everywhere," Murdock said. "It would take 61 ships just to control the internationally designated shipping route, which is a small portion of the 1.1 million square miles where we have seen pirates attack."
She said that deterrence methods such as the ones used by Princess were the most effective.
"We have seen success with ships who take nonkinetic defensive measures such as posting lookouts, varying speed and maneuver, and using fire hoses and barbed wire," Murdock said. "These are turning out to be the most effective prevention measures."
Other cruise lines are taking more radical measures to deal with the pirate issue, such as unloading their passengers prior to crossing and flying them to the next port beyond the gulf.
The German cruise line Hapag-Lloyd said it would not carry any passengers through the gulf as long as there was a German government travel warning about the region, which there has been since November.
Employing a tactic it used once before, Hapag-Lloyd will have all passengers on its April 21 Europa cruise from Dubai to Cypress disembark in Oman, where it will put them up in a luxury hotel for three nights before flying them to Al Hudaydah, Yemen, to rejoin the ship.
Crystal Cruises sent a letter to all passengers on a May 19 cruise from Dubai to Athens offering anyone who did not want to make the transit an optional and complimentary overland trip to Luxor, Egypt, where they would spend four days before meeting the ship.
Some lines would prefer not to disclose their counterpiracy tactics.
"Security will be at its highest levels, and we will be employing extra measures to ensure the security and safety of our guests," said Tim Rubacky, spokesman for Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises, each of which has a ship crossing the gulf this season. "We cannot divulge the details of those security arrangements, especially prior to a transit."
Perhaps as a result of the increased military vigilance in the gulf, the recent upswing in pirate activity has shifted farther south.
Seabourn spokesman Bruce Good said, "To my knowledge, there have been no successful attacks in that corridor" since the naval patrols started, "and the attacks recently have been down off the southern Somali coast, 500 miles south."
This is good news for cruise ship traffic, which mostly avoids the area off the coast of Somalia, but the issue will not go away as long as Somalia continues to be a lawless nation with no central government and a broken economy.
"Piracy is a problem that starts ashore, and requires an international solution," Murdock said. "The ultimate solution is on the beach, in Somalia, and assuring security and stability to make sure the conditions that lead to piracy are no longer there."