This came my way from Wired Magazine, in an article about the Somali pirates homemade hijacking videos. It is an interesting glimpse into life on board a hijacked ship sitting just off the coast of Somalia. A lot of waiting, quiet, and still. There is an odd sense of a kid in a candy store [...]

The AP has posted raw video of the M/V Maersk Alabama entering Mombasa at night, and a brief unedited moment that clearly shows the stress and frustration merchant mariners are dealing with in this region, and particularly on the Maersk Alabama.  There is strong language used in this clip. ▶

I saw a comment post on gcaptain that sparked my interest. It said “Time to bring back the Q ships”. While the entire world now engages in discussing how to stop piracy, I took a moment to research this, as I did not recall what exactly the Q ships were. Q ships where heavily armed merchant ships used in WWI and WWII with concealed weaponry that were designed to lure enemy subs into engaging them in a surface attack. Essentially decoy ships.

Here is the latest directly from Maersk:

Maersk Alabama Situation: 0600 EDT Update

Norfolk, Va., 9 April 2009: The current situation involving the Maersk Alabama has remained much the same throughout the night. The ship’s crewmembers have been accounted for and are safely aboard the vessel. However, the ship’s captain remains in the custody of the pirates, who departed in one of the ship’s encapsulated life boats on April 8.

The U.S. flagged M/V Maersk Alabama has been hijacked by pirates approximately 280 miles (450 kilometers) northeast of Eyl, a town in the northern Puntland region of Somalia. The ship reportedly has 21 U.S. citizens aboard and is the first U.S. flagged vessel to be hijacked by Somali pirates.