Somali Pirates: Royal Navy Nabs 13 and Mothership (U.S. Navy gets assist)

BBC News reports Royal Navy captures 13 Somali pirates:

Royal Marines apprehending pirates on dhow

RFA Fort Victoria and a US Navy vessel intercepted the pirates' boat, which had refused to stop despite warning shots from a Royal Navy helicopter.

Royal Marines in speedboats approached the vessel and boarded it, capturing 13 pirates and seizing weapons.
***
This latest operation was carried out around dawn on Friday. Capt Shaun Jones RFA, commanding officer on RFA Fort Victoria, said: "To manoeuvre such a large ship at speed in close vicinity of a nimble dhow takes extreme concentration and skill; my team were never found wanting." Capt James Sladden, who commanded the Royal Marines boarding party, added: "The moment of going on board the dhow was tense as we knew there were pirates on board who had refused to stop despite our warning shots. "Through our weapon sights we could see there were about 13 pirates, mostly gathered in the area of the bridge. We quickly boarded and secured the vessel before mustering the pirates on the bow."

If they can't get to sea, they can't capture ships. Containment. See here, here and here and at the links therein. Perhaps this time . . .

Somali Pirates: British Force Takes Down Pirate "Mothership"

HMS Somerset's Merlin helicopter fires warning shots across the bow of the pirate dhow [Picture: Leading Airman (Photographer) Dave Jenkins, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011]

Reported as British Commandos free 20 crew held hostage on pirate "mothership"in the Indian ocean:

Royal Marine Commandos staged a daring raid freeing 20 sailors held hostage on a pirate 'mothership' afloat in the Indian Ocean, it was revealed today.

Backed by gunfire from a Merlin helicopter, a boarding team stormed the cargo vessel, which had been hijacked by pirates to use as a base to attack merchant shipping in the area.

'Through my weapon sight I could see dark figures moving in the shadows on the bridge,' said Captain Rod Yapp, who led the assault.'We quickly boarded and secured the dhow, then mustered the 24 occupants on her bow.'

UK MOD report, with more pictures, here:

It is believed the dhow was hijacked by suspected pirates so that they could use it as a base, or mother ship, from which to launch attacks against merchant ships many hundreds of miles from Somalia. Throughout this time, the Pakistani crew of the dhow were held hostage onboard.

On Friday 14 October, some 200 miles (320km) off the coast, HMS Somerset and RFA Fort Victoria closed in on the dhow.

HMS Somerset's Commanding Officer, Commander Paul Bristowe, said:

"The mother ship was located by Somerset's Merlin helicopter at first light and the boarding teams brought to immediate notice whilst Somerset closed with the dhow."
***
In the run up to being boarded, the suspected pirates were observed by Somerset's Merlin helicopter ditching equipment and weapons overboard as well as setting one of their skiffs adrift. Despite their desperate attempts to cover their tracks, a large cache of boarding ladders, weapons, a second attack skiff, and equipment from a previously pirated ship were found onboard.

Captain Yapp said:

"There was a clear indication that the suspected pirates found on the dhow were well-practised and knew what they were doing. One of the weapons had recently been fired and was well maintained - as was the RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] rocket.

"I think that if we hadn't disrupted this group of suspected pirates, it is quite possible that they would have attacked another merchant vessel."

Libya: The beginning of NATO boot prints?

One of my concerns over the Libya mess has been with the rebels and their logistics support - see Libya: How are the rebel logistics?

An unconfirmed report of a partial solution to rebel logistics - British boots on the ground in Libya strike:

The United Kingdom will send a Royal Navy taskforce of 600 marines and at least six ships to Libya this week as part of a humanitarian mission to provide medical and food aid to rebel-held towns, the London-based Times reported on Sunday, without disclosing where it got the information.

HMS Liverpool

The marines, who are due to fly out to Gibraltar later this week, will be used to protect ports where supplies will be unloaded, the newspaper reported in its paper edition. The ships in the taskforce, which are due to leave in the next two days, will include the landing platform Albion, the type-42 destroyer Liverpool and four support ships, the Times said.

HMS Albion in New York

What this tells us is that the rebels will be receiving supplies and that at least one NATO country will have forces in the field, albeit for reportedly limited purposes.

If Gaddafi has a lick of sense, he'll leave the Brits alone. However, given our experience with him so far . . .

Somali Pirate Fail: MV Beluga Fortune Recovered

Some interesting photos of a boarding party from HMS Montrose getting aboard MV Beluga Fortune to ensure teh Somali pirates who held it briefly were gone at Pirates fail in pirating MV BELUGA FORTUNE in Somali Basin:

The warship HMS Montrose, operating under NATO’s naval force, headed towards the vessel as it was the closest ship from the scene of attack. As a result, the pirates set fire to part of the superstructure and immediately abandoned the ship on 25 October. “A team of Royal Marines from HMS Montrose boarded the vessel this afternoon and released them from the safe room,” explained NATO. “None of the crew were injured.”

Somali Pirates: Action by the Royal Navy and Marines

The Royal Navy recently has undertaken efforts to slow down the Somali pirates as set out here in an article devoted to describing the efforts of HMS Montrose in enforcing a semi-blockade of one area of the Somali coast:

. . . The ship was alerted yesterday to a gang of ten men acting suspiciously in a small boat off the coast of Somalia near to a known pirate camp. Their boat, loaded with ladders and fuel drums, was towing two other smaller vessels that have been traditionally used for pirate attacks against ships,said the UK Ministry of Defence.

HMS Montrose, which left HM Naval Base Devonport this summer, launched her Lynx helicopter and a boat of Royal Marines and sailors to investigate.

Once the suspected pirates spotted the helicopter and boarding team, four of the suspected pirates took one of the smaller boats and tried to flee to shore. The remaining men stopped in the water and when the Lynx helicopter hovered overhead they tried to get rid of their ladders overboard.

After the Royal Navy boarding team confiscated all the pirate gear, thus ensuring that the gang could no longer pose a threat to merchantmen, they were transferred to the remaining skiff.

Previous action by the ship thwarted an attack on a merchant ship.

The Royal Marines, as presented in an article by LCPL Ryan Gorman found in The Globe and Laurel (and forwarded to me by a kind reader) engaged in a little blockade work of their own as they undertook a raid against a Somali pirate haven:

After lots of surface searches along the Somali coast we gained a lot of intelligence on the main pirate camps and identified some that had not been recorded before. We noticed that the pirates kept their whalers (large skiffs with an inboard engine carrying around 16-20 barrels of fuel on board) anchored just off the shore. They used them to store all their fuel, to refuel their skiffs, and packed them to act as mother vessels for launching attacks at sea.

To counter this capability a plan was formed to insert, stealing the whalers, tow them out into deeper water and blow them up, this became known as a small Commando raid.

One of the three Whaler type boats that HMS Lancaster destroyed

The first raid was on two whalers positioned 200m from the beach. There was a lot of activity on the beach and a pirate camp was hidden in the caves behind the beach. As we approached the beach, some jack pirates retreated in a skiff, leaving one of their oppos in a whaler. As the team in the RIBs approached, they detained the pirate that had been left behind and started cutting the whalers loose and towing them away from the beach. It was decided to leave the whaler behind with the captured pirate in it. Before the whaler was left behind, Capt Eaton and LCpl Wilson smashed the parrels open with an axe and poured 1kg of sugar into each (supposedly this makes it unusable). The whaler that was towed away was then blown up by Lancaster's 30mm gun; it looked like a scene from a Hollywood film as a nice big fireball erupted!

Having completed over 50 AAVs and 15 boardings, we have been one of the busier teams in recent years. In total we managed to capture six pirates, blow up two whalers and sabotage another one (a total of around 50 barrels of fuel destroyed). This will definitely disrupt pirate operatios in the area for a while. The raids were an interesting new tactic for the Navy and it is the first time that any boarding team has conducted such a task in recent years. Hopefully the standard has now been set and other RMBTs can continue to sabotage, dirupt and imprison more pirates in the future!

Lower two photos from HMS Lancaster website.

UPDATE: An earlier report of Turkish inshore action from Saturn 5 here:

The ship's helicopter was scanning the southern Somali coast for pirate activity when a suspicious vessel was seen not far from the shore and near a suspected pirate camp, some 100 miles south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Initial reports from the helicopter crew stated seeing the kind of equipment commonly used by pirates on the vessel. TCG Gokceada's boarding team was quickly dispatched and boarded the suspicious vessel.

The seven-man boarding team found 21 drums of fuel, enough to sustain a small vessel at sea for many days, and a long ladder with hooks (the kind typically used by pirates to board large cargo vessels).
Approval was given for the boarding team to transfer the three personnel on the vessel ashore, to confiscate the fuel and ladder, and sink the vessel.