When you think of pirates, what comes to mind first? Is it the image of a one-eyed, hooker-handed, one-legged substituted for wood? Or a wooden sailing ship with a skull flag? Or one Piece Luffy in a straw hat? In fact, from the literal understanding is already very straightforward, pirates, thieves at sea, and bandits on land belong to a grade. With a history of nearly 700 years, this industry can barely be regarded as a "traditional industry", and the pirate images presented in many movies or anime and their wonderful experiences even make people worship them and yearn for their lives.
Admittedly, the pirate industry has indeed produced celebrities and dignitaries, such as the British explorer Francis. Derek, Harald Blatand, who had conquered Denmark and Norway, Zheng Chenggong's father Zheng Zhilong, and the 4w crew of more than 500 warships in the late Qing Dynasty single-handedly defeated the beautiful pirate Zheng Yiyi of the Qing, British and Portuguese fleets, as well as Captain Jack in "Pirates of the Caribbean". However, more pirates did not explore the seas, rob the rich and the poor or defend their families like "Captain Jack", their targets were cargo ships, merchant ships, fishing boats at sea... It can be said that except for warships, any ship is in their eyes the parents of their own wealth. The most famous of these pirates is today's protagonist , the Somali pirates.
Geographically, the somali sea is close to the Gulf of Aden, and the north and south banks of the Gulf of Aden have the port of Aden and Djibouti, which pass through the Suez Canal from the Indian Ocean and eventually enter the Mediterranean Sea or the most important transit and supply ports on the Atlantic Route. But Somalia, which has the longest coastline in Africa, has not used these advantages to vigorously develop its trade and strengthen its own strength, but has focused on civil unrest.
Since the 1990s, Somalia has been plagued by years of war, smoke and smoke, perennial anarchy, the country is fragmented, and the Somali people live a life of hunger and hunger. So, they began to find ways to change their living conditions, find ways to feed their stomachs, feed their families' stomachs. They sat by the sea, looking at the sunset and the ships of the river, and a bold idea and crazy plan began to brew in their minds: "Maybe being a pirate is also a good choice", so they put down their hoes and shovels, took up ropes and daggers, gave up the fields and livestock, and chose the sea and the merchant ship.
"Hey, dude! Listen to me, we are refugees from Somalia, our country is devastated by war, and we cannot survive. Oh, don't worry, we don't fight anymore, we don't farm sheep anymore, we're now pirates. Rest assured, we don't want your life, as long as you obediently give money to eat, we absolutely guarantee your safety! ”。 Perhaps from the first day they decided to be pirates, the people of Somalia set a rule for themselves, only to seek wealth, not to kill, and their goal was only to dress and eat. But gradually, as they upgraded their equipment from knives and ropes to AKs and bazookas, and as they succeeded in reaping huge profits from merchant ships, they began to swell, they began to become more greedy, they no longer wanted food and clothing, and they began to think that maybe they could get more.
Watching the pirates taste the sweetness again and again, more Somali people can't sit still. They had already been overwhelmed by the surge in refugee populations, soaring food prices and inflation, so they gradually began to support the pirates, and even joined the pirates. In this way, the number of Somali pirates became more and more numerous, from less than a hundred at the beginning to more than a thousand later, and the size of the group grew, and even formed four camps: the "Puntland Guard", the "National Coastal Volunteer Guard", "Melka" and the "Somali Sailors".
After the team grew, they used the money from the previous looting to upgrade their equipment from head to toe, rifles, bazookas, GPS, satellite phones, and even transportation was changed from fishing boats to speedboats, in order to expand their range of activities and combat effectiveness. And the pirates were not all reckless, they knew that the ships and the people on the ships were far more valuable than the money and cargo they snatched each time, so they began their own new wave of plans - hijacking ships, kidnapping people, extorting ransoms from the ship government, and getting millions of dollars at a time, and in 2008 alone, the pirates profited nearly $120 million from the ransom.
But why did the pirates' new "strategic plan" succeed again and again? First, hijacked ships are not equipped with weapons, because shipowners are generally reluctant to pay high prices to hire professional guards, and ports and ships are not allowed to be equipped with guards and carry weapons, which provides the greatest convenience for Somali pirates to hijack ships.
Secondly, after the ship is hijacked, as long as the pirates do not kill people and do not rob the goods, the ship owner will generally meet the requirements of the pirates. Because once there is a shooting, injury and alarm the insurance company, it will not be worth the loss, which greatly promotes the arrogance of the pirates.
Third, due to some special reasons in the somali sea, although the navies of various countries have tried to encircle and suppress, they have not been successful because of various reasons such as maritime sovereignty and resource interests, and in the process of escaping encirclement and suppression, the pirates have summed up a set of their own rules of survival, once they encounter warships, they will use hostages as shields to help them escape smoothly.
So, did Somali pirates encounter resistance when they hijacked ships? Has that ship ever staged a triumphant escape under the clutches of Somali pirates?
As mentioned earlier, Somali pirates are mainly divided into four groups, and the strongest is the "pirate king" Abadi Evya and his "Somali Marines" (somali sailors mentioned above). Through formal management and sophisticated equipment (with carriers capable of carrying speedboats), the pirate team made nearly $30 million a year, the most famous "battle" of which was the successful hijacking of Ukrainian cargo ships carrying a large number of munitions, including tanks, and the Giant Saudi tanker Sirius. However, the pirates did not succeed in every raid, and from 2008 to 2011, two Chinese ships not only successfully escaped from the Somali pirate audience, but even caused the pirates to suffer small losses.
In December 2008, the Chinese freighter Zhenhua 4 was attacked by two pirate speedboats and nine heavily armed pirates while sailing into the Gulf of Aden. From the discovery of the speedboat, the captain Peng Wenyuan immediately used the communication equipment on the ship to send a distress signal, and urgently deployed a resistance plan, because the Zhenhua IV freighter belongs to a semi-submersible transport ship, the deck is less than five meters from the sea, in order to win more time, the captain gathered all the crew to the living area and cut off the ladder between the main deck and the living area, intending to take advantage of the gap of more than 6 meters between the two to deal with the pirates. In the face of pirates wielding bazookas and rifles, the 30 crew members were not afraid to use the ship's iron rods, high-pressure water guns and homemade improvised Molotov cocktails to prepare to launch a stubborn resistance to the pirate ship.
In the face of the active resistance of the crew, the pirates who have always been smooth sailing were really a little overwhelmed for a while, but after all, the pirates had automatic weapons in their hands, and after a strafing, 7 pirates except the speedboat driver still boarded the deck of Zhenhua 4. At this time, Zhenhua 4 had already closed all the hatches, and in the face of a gap of more than 6 meters between the deck and the living area, the pirates were a little helpless. Because if they can't get into the cockpit, then they can't drive the ship away, and not being able to enter the living area means that they can't take hostages, and they can't always hope to send such a large transport ship to their base by the waves, so that their hijacking mission will end in failure, and for a time, the pirates and the crew have formed a state of confrontation.
The pirates were helpless, and the crew on the Zhenhua IV was not idle, and they used the only weapons in their hands to launch a counterattack against the pirates again. The pirates were once again in a state of hecticism, especially the broken glass slag of the Molotov cocktails, which made the pirates who were accustomed to barefoot suffer. Seeing that an hour had passed and they had not been able to take the ship, the pirates had a plan, claiming that as long as the crew gave them shoes, they would withdraw from the ship and let them go. Looking at the pirates' bloody feet, the kind captain agreed to the pirates' request, but unexpectedly, the pirates who got the shoes immediately turned their faces and launched another attack on the Zhenhua Iv.
Fortunately, at this time, a Malaysian helicopter rushed to the scene of the accident after receiving a distress signal from the captain, and with the assistance of the helicopter, the pirate's search speedboat was sunk. However, the good times did not last long, and in the case of pirate shooting and lack of vitality, the plane returned to the base. Fortunately, shortly after the plane returned to the base, sea support from various countries also came quickly, and the pirates saw that the situation was not good, so they had to evacuate, and Zhenhua 4 was able to escape.
And the other Chinese ship that fled triumphantly, the Cargo Ship Jianingshan, may be in a more sinister situation. After unloading in India in February 2011 and intending to be attacked by Somali pirates on the way to South Africa via the Indian Ocean for supplies, we should first note that the Jianning Mountain was not located in the Gulf of Aden, which is close to the interior of Somalia but in the Indian Ocean. That's right, as mentioned earlier, the Somali Marine Corps under the pirate king Abadi Evya, the ceiling group of Somali pirates. However, in the face of such a strong pirate force, the Jianning Mountain, which did not have any firepower equipment, was enough to resist their three rounds of strong attacks.
Here we first briefly introduce the staffing on Jia Ning Mountain, captain Zhou Zebin is a young man of only 33 years old, but calm, mature and stable; half of the 26 crew members are veterans, with high execution and tactical literacy. All of this set the stage for what happened afterwards. However, they encountered the troops of the "Pirate King", and they were the lords who dared to rob even the ships carrying arms, and such an opponent could not be underestimated.
Therefore, after determining that the unidentified vessel trailing was indeed a pirate ship, Zhou Zebin notified all the staff to be on alert at the same time, and the captain also sent a distress signal. In the face of the rapidly approaching pirate mother ship and the fierce fire of the pirates, the captain commanded the Jianning Mountain to constantly change course, trying to consume the pirates and buy time to evacuate. This action infuriated the pirates, who continued to pursue but could not force the Jianning Mountain to stop, let alone board the ship, if it was allowed to reach other seas and exceed its own territory, then today's day would really be in vain, so the pirates quickly released the speedboat towed by the mother ship and continued to pursue the Jia ning Mountain.
As a result, the speedboat quickly caught up with the Jia Ning Shan and formed a closed state. Here it has to be said that this wave of Somali Marines is indeed not ordinary pirates, but actually knows some martial arts and knows the tactics of encirclement. Under the cover of fire superiority, the pirates began to try to board the ship. However, under the precise throwing of the homemade Molotov cocktails and the crew dong friendship, the pirates not only failed to board the ship, but also burned their clothes by the flying Molotov cocktails and ignited the speedboat.
After the first attack was blocked, the pirates soon attacked again with their superiority in firepower. With this "geographical" advantage, the crew of the Jia Ning Mountain threw a harpoon with a handle to the pirates, and they did not expect that this trick actually worked, and the pirates in the fork screamed in pain. The AK47-like weapons they were equipped with also exposed the shortcomings of poor accuracy at this moment, and soon, the pirates ran out of ammunition and could only temporarily leave the Jianning Mountain and return to the mother ship for supplies.
After replenishing their ammunition, the pirate speedboats once again approached the Jia Ning Shan, and this time, they took heavy weapons and bazookas with them, intending to seize the ship in one fell swoop and demand ransom. On the other hand, the Jianning Mountain also took advantage of the gap in the supply of the pirate ship to quickly sail away, because the Jia Ning Shan had completed the unloading task at that time and was in an empty state, so it was still very fast in terms of travel speed, which caused trouble for the pirates to board the ship to a certain extent.
But the pirates did not seem to want to return without success, so they fired three rockets into the ship's wheelhouse in succession, and Zhou Zebin, who found the pirates through the telescope, immediately commanded the ship to avoid the attack of the pirate rockets, but the second room and the deck were still damaged by the rockets.
This round of attack lasted for almost 15 minutes, the first to be able to hold on was the pirates, they prepared to withdraw the mothership, waiting for the opportunity to launch another attack, so the two sides formed the phenomenon of The Jianning Mountain in front and the pirate wooden ship trailing behind. Soon, the pirate speedboat launched a second attack on the Jia Ning Shan with the target of the stern. This time, the crew concentrated all the signal flares on board to the stern, ready to fight to the death.
At 3:30 p.m., the pirates arrived at the stern, the crew could only continue to use the flaming flares as weapons to resist the pirates at the stern, although it was not as good as the real guns, but the flares with the flame acceleration still caused damage to the pirates, the pirates were also afraid of death, and began to dodge, and the crew in the cabin were also accelerating the homemade Molotov cocktails.
At the same time, the crew who can throw harpoons is not idle, with signal flares, harpoons, Molotov cocktails, which can not cause serious damage, the crew forced the pirates not to go near the ship. The pirates were also in a hurry, so they raised their guns to ease the attack of the crew, and at the same time threw tear gas at the ship, and many of the crew members were choked to tears and coughed. At this time, some sailors who had practiced fighting and turning the stars quickly grabbed tear gas and threw them back to the pirates, so that the pirates could feel a sense of self-inflicted wounds. Under the stubborn resistance of the crew, the pirates had no chance to take advantage of it, so they had to retreat again in disgrace.
But the pirates did not die, around five o'clock in the afternoon, they launched another attack, this time they developed a new tactic, first let a search of speedboats harass, distract the crew, while another speedboat quietly detoured the ship, waiting for the opportunity to board the ship (I don't know if the formulator of this tactic was through Mr. Pu Songling's "Three Rules of Wolves", trying to use the tactic of "pre-wolf pretending to sleep, covering the enemy"), but still failed, the third retreat.
The crew breathed a sigh of relief, but did not let down their guard in the slightest, and remained in their combat positions. Knowing that at 9:45 p.m., the pirate mother ship that had been trailing for a long time finally disappeared from the radar and the telescope could no longer see the pirate ship, the crew was finally relieved. The battle lasted 3 hours, but the pirates with the superiority of weapons did not even go up to the ship, while only two of the 26 crew members were slightly injured and the hull was not seriously injured. This classic defensive battle also provides a lesson for other cargo ships to learn from in future anti-piracy battles.
Afterwards, the crews of both ships were rewarded, and here we salute all the crews and praise them for their bravery.