UK Navy Watched As Pirates Took British Couple Hostage

LONDON — The crew of a Royal Navy vessel watched as a British couple was abducted by Somali pirates, unable to rescue them without endangering their lives, the British military said Friday.

As armed pirates boarded Paul and Rachel Chandler's yacht on Oct. 23, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary replenishment tanker Wave Knight was within view, carrying light arms and a crew of 75 merchant seamen and 25 navy sailors in the Indian Ocean, the Ministry of Defense said.

But the crew could not intervene without putting the Chandlers at further risk, and could only watch as the pirates forced the couple off their yacht, the Lynn Rival, and onto an open skiff.

The ministry refused to give further information, saying it could not comment on operational details. It said in a statement that the Wave Knight "did very well under the circumstances."

Authorities believe the Chandlers, who are in their 50s, are now being held on land in Somalia. Pirates have demanded $7 million for their release – ransom the British government says it will not pay.

The Chandlers have been sailing around the world since retiring several years ago.

The waters off Somalia are teeming with pirates who have hijacked dozens of ships for multimillion-dollar ransoms in the past two years.

The Wave Knight is part of an international anti-piracy mission off Somalia's 1,900-mile-long (3,100-kilometer) coast. U.S., NATO and European Union ships patrol the pirate-infested area and escort aid shipments and merchant marines vessels through the Gulf of Aden.

France said Friday that its navy had seized three boats off Somalia's coast and detained 12 suspected pirates while seizing an arsenal including assault rifles and rocket launchers.

The operation Thursday by the Floreal surveillance boat was part of the EU anti-piracy mission in the region, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Alerted by a Luxembourg maritime surveillance plane on Wednesday, the Floreal was given orders to pursue the suspicious boats. It intercepted the pirate ship and two skiffs about 750 miles (1,207 kilometers) east of Hobyo, Somalia, the statement said.

Comments

[jasev01]

They did not pay their taxes that's the real reason

[randyjet]

I don't think the British government is too eager to get them back with the story about how the Royal Navy simply watched them get taken. I know the RN sure as hell does NOT want them back any time soon, if ever.

[Billy Hell]

From the article: "The Wave Knight is part of an international anti-piracy mission off Somalia's 1,900-mile-long (3,100-kilometer) coast. U.S., NATO and European Union ships patrol the pirate-infested area and escort aid shipments and merchant marines vessels through the Gulf of Aden."

Read: "The Wave Knight is part of an international anti-piracy mission off Somalia's 1,900-mile-long (3,100-kilometer) coast. U.S., NATO and European Union ships patrol the pirate-infested area and ensure the continued illegal fishing and illegal dumping of toxic waste in Somali waters by the west."

[randyjet]

that has to be one of the dumbest things I have seen in a while. I guess that the British couple were fishing over the limit for Somalia, yes? Or perhaps they were pissing into the water which justified their being kidnapped. GET REAL!

[davidwayneosedach]

Who would go pleasure sailing in waters teaming with pirates?

[Cinnamonape]

The area that the pirates cover is quite immense, and all sorts of boats sail down the Western half of the Indian Ocean in order to get into the Red Sea (Suez Canal) or so they can sail around the Cape of Good Hope.

[Horst]

HMS PInafore..­.

[randyjet]

I don't think even Gilbert and Sullivan could have dreamed up something as absurd as this one.

[Tom Joad]

...Pirates of Penzance..­.

[Duncan77]

Sad though it is the Royal Navy did the right thing. It was a lightly armed Fleet Auxiliary ship (which basically means a few SA80s and handguns) and any action would have resulted in the deaths of Mr and Mrs Chandler which kind of defeats the purpose of stepping in. If it was a frigate or something then maybe they should have stepped in but that is academic.

Any comparisons to the hostage situation with Iran are spurious at best. In the Iran situation the sailors recognised that it is better to be alive than die in a pointless way which would have caused even more suffering.

Hopefully the government will find the ship the Chandlers are being held on and send in the SBS to kick some arse.

[Garioch]

Unfortunately the majority of the people commenting on here subsist on a diet of Die Hard and Rambo movies and have confused that with real life believing that you can shoot across a ships bow with a rifle and maneuvering alongside a small yacht with a tanker while firing small arms at a pirate boat will have a welcome outcome.
It may however go some way to explaining how the U.S. armed forces manage to kill so many British and Canadian troops fighting on the same side and Afghan wedding parties.

[DJ Koolkat]

Insinuating that our troops have that mentality is asinine and completely offensive.

[Horst]

You are probably correct, however Britain these days has assumed the supine cockroach position now that the worst of the pandemic Diana Bereavement Syndrome has passed.

[GalinMcMahon]

Was it not a ship that was part of anti-piracy operations? What a bunch of tea drinking kittens. Any American ship armed with guns would have made an example of those pirates.

[Garioch]

And they would then have 'rescued' a couple of corpses.

[dogman44]

Killing them to save them is counter productive.

[Yank in France]

I don't know about this given situation -- and neither does anyone else here -- but it seems to me that the international community has taken much too soft of an approach to the pirates. Personally, I like the Russian approach of killing terrorist even if it means losing some of the hostages. The Chechens have not any large-scale hostage-taking in Russia since their their failed operations in Moscow and later in a Russian region near Chechnya. I admit the Russian are really brutish but a trained Western force could achieve much better results. Just shooting pirates as they try to give up with be a pleasant start!!

[dems08]

"The Wave Knight is part of an international anti-piracy mission"

and they just watched the pirates board the yacht...

[JStading]

I agree - piracy won't stop in that area until the people of Somalia equate piracy with almost certain death. The British navy ought to have taken the risk and intervened. Worst case scenario, two individuals who will likely be killed by the pirates when it becomes apparent that the British government will not pay would have been injured or killed. Best case scenario, it becomes readily apparent to even more people in the region that piracy will not be tolerated.

[TAIsabel]

Read my post below, none of this is making any sense to me. Never has, never will.

[Garioch]

Which part of supply tanker do you not get? The civilian cook on board that was also part of the international anti-piracy mission, I suppose in your Hollywood world he would have swum across with a knife in his teeth and stopped the whole thing?

[dogman44]

I've seen that happen before. If only I could remember where.

[Paulo1]

"The crew of a Royal Navy vessel watched as a British couple was abducted by Somali pirates"

Nelson and whole fleets of Royal Navy dead are spinning in their graves at the shame of it. There was a time when the Royal Navy actually had a shred of honor when it came to these things.

[Whinger]

Rule Britania! Britannia rule the waves.

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

[Horst]

It's amazing...­.once the Royal Navy was a magnificent fighting force....n­ow they are comparable to the Belgian Navy. Remember the sobbing sailors captured by the Iranian inflatables? Pretty sad...but look at Britain now.

[Garioch]

We're doing fine and most of us are glad that we no longer see the need to impose our will on the rest of the world and maintain an empire.
If others are still keen to do so then that's up to them.

[CoconutLime]

Wimps, just like the Canadian Navy.

[Oleg1]

Limeys are getting to be worse than Canutes.

[deluk]

I expect the pirates were better equipped than the contemporary British navy, they probably had grappling hooks, cutlasses, flintlocks and everything.

[Sentientbeing09]

Youre suggesting the Navy didnt engage a vessel because they were "scared"?

Modern navies arent privateers. Theyre a professional military that folliows orders from their government, not a roving militia of a banana republic driving round on a flat bed truck shooting at anybody they see fit.

Theyre not undisciplined private contractors.

[LeftCoastLarry]

Do you always have opinions on things you know nothing about?

[CanadianBeef]

I'm not usually a hang-'em-high person, but I think no mercy whatsoever should be shown to these pirates. They should be fired upon under all circumstances. When pirates start being blown to bits on a regular basis, Somalis will look for other types of employment.

[CanadianBeef]

"The Wave Knight is part of an international anti-piracy mission off Somalia's 1,900-mile-long (3,100-kilometer) coast. "
So this is ship that allowed a pirate kidnapping to take place within its sight? Time to re-think this . . .

[Garioch]

It's a tanker. It refuels the other ships, is it that you don't understand the basics of operations or you can't read?

[dems08]

the "Wave Knight was within view, carrying light arms and a crew of 75 merchant seamen and 25 navy sailors"

[Oleg1]

The great traditions of British Navy have been degenerated to an alarming extent. This is beyond pathetic.

[deluk]

What! The Navy That Built An Empire has abandoned rum, the lash and sodomy??

This is terrible, I blame Gordon Brown.

[Cinnamonape]

Those folks all emigrated to the Americas and became Republicans!

[randyjet]

I mourn the demise of the once proud Royal Navy. I is absurd to say that they could do nothing since they obviously saw the pirates approaching, and failed to stop them before they got to the couple. It is even sadder commentary that the French had enough guts to go and get their citizens who had been taken, unlike the Brits. Incredible!

[Amalek]

I guess it never crossed the Captain's mind that a runabout a few hundred miles off Somalia heading towards a British vessel might have ill intent. Anyone with any sense would have fired a few warning shots in front of the skiff, and if they failed to immediately surrender would have hardly hesitated before making fish food out of them.

[Garioch]

Shots across its bow with what? It's a tanker carrying light arms; you do know what light arms are don't you? You do realise that they're not the sort of thing that you use to put a shot across anyone’s bow don't you?
Did you expect to make like the A Team and manufacture a weapon to do this from the ships superstructure?
A small bit of information for you, the A Team was fiction and real life is not like that.

[drjasonmd]

It's a tanker ship. It doesn't have anything to fire warning shots with. The only arms on board were rifles carried by the crew.