When most of us think of “pirates,” if we do at all these days, we imagine swashbuckling sailors aboard picturesque ships in days of yore, flying “Jolly Roger” black skull-and-crossbones flags, and armed with cutlasses as they board hapless ships on the high seas.
Nowadays, we usually see such things only in the movies. But unfortunately, piracy still exists in modern real life, too.
Most often, the current reports of piracy come from the “Horn of Africa,” off the coast of the little country of Somalia, south of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, leading into the Indian Ocean.
The modern pirates use swift motorboats to attack big tankers and merchant ships, demanding huge ransoms from lightly armed – or unarmed – crews. The pirates await payoffs to be delivered from the ship owners far away, who want to save their crews and their huge cargo investments.
But last Thursday, some brigands who had boarded a German-owned ship off Somalia got a big surprise.
Piracy in that area has become so serious that an international anti-piracy force has been policing the seas. So when the most recent piracy occurred, the victimized crew members managed to lock themselves in a “safe room” aboard the ship – and await U.S. Marines, who came to the rescue!
The “air-and-sea” Marines, using Cobra attack helicopters and small boats, overwhelmed the nine pirates without a shot being fired.
It was a modern, movie-like “happy ending.”