Landing the Big One

Landing the Big One

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Somali Pirates: Tanker Attacked Near India

Early reports of a tanker attack approximately 40 nm off India.

The tanker NS Century reportedly used onboard armed guards to fend off the attack.

NS Century seems to be in the fleet of JSC Novoship.

Details to follow as I learn them.

NS Century photo by Oldkayaker from Shipspotting.com.

UPDATE:
Red arrow points to attack location


More from ICC IMB's Commercial Crime Services IMB Piracy Map 2011
Three skiffs were noticed at a distance of 6.3 nm ahead of a tanker underway. A suspected mother vessel without AIS signal was also noticed via radar around 17nm ahead. The skiffs increased speed and headed towards the tanker. One of the skiffs increased its speed to around 20knots.There were 6-8 persons in each skiff. Master commenced evasive manoeuvres, alerted all crewmembers. The skiffs closed to around three cables and the armed security team onboard fired warning shots.
For those who wonder about such things, a cable is more or less 200 meters (219 meter U.S./185 Brit) or 660 feet +/-).

3 comments:

  1. She had armed guards onboard who opened fire at three cables. Pirates exited stage right back to the mothership - end of engagement.
    Note the ICS has now lightly sanctioned the use of guards, quite a turnaround over the hard line against until recently. Unfortunately BMP 3 still advises against. Bit of a shipping industry mess at the moment.

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  2. its funny - we had a vessel right behind this incident - all we saw were fisherman - and none of them were armed!!

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  3. Might be a reason why this getting so little notice . . .

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