North East ship captain tells of Somali pirate ordeal
Jun 4 2009 The Journal
SOMALI pirates arrested after a North East captain helped to prevent them hijacking his ship could stand trial in the Middle East.
Capt Peter Stapleton, from South Shields, South Tyneside, has been hailed a hero after fighting off feared Somali bandits with nothing more than chunks of wood.
The closest ally, the Russian destroyer Admiral Panteleyev, was alerted to the pirates’ mothership by a mayday call from Capt Stapleton’s vessel, the Boularibank.
The crew made 29 arrests and have now handed the suspected hijackers to Iranian and Pakistani investigators, international news agencies have reported.
The dead calm of a sunny morning off the coast of Somalia was shattered when two unidentified blips appeared on Capt Stapleton’s bridge radar, heading at speed in their direction.
Capt Stapleton thought the boats, 200 miles from the nearest land, could be honest fishing vessels, but instead they came armed with rocket-propelled grenades and AK47 assault rifles.
All was well on the first legs of the voyage from Hull, around Europe, on to Tahiti through the Panama Canal, to New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and Malaysia.
But trouble hit as the ship entered the ocean passage which would take Boularibank to the Suez Canal via Somali waters. Capt Stapleton recounted the ordeal which left his 550ft cargo freighter riddled with bullet-holes and mortar damage.
