Ship's Disappearance Sparks UK Pirate Fear
Today, 12:13 am
SkyNews © Sky News 2009
Maritime authorities are trying to trace a cargo ship last heard of passing through the English Channel they fear may have been captured by pirates.
The Maltese-registered Arctic Sea, which has a Russian crew, spoke to the Dover Coastguard on July 28 but has not been heard from since.
Four days earlier she had apparently been boarded in the Baltic Sea.
The intruders appear to have left the ship some 12 hours later on a high-speed inflatable and allowed the vessel to continue on its passage but with its communications equipment damaged.
However, there are fears that the 3,988tn ship, carrying about £1m worth of sawn timber from Finland to Algeria, was still under the control of pirates when contact was made with the British Coastguards.
Mark Clark, of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, said Dover Coastguard did not suspect anything untoward as a supposed crew member made radio contact before the ship made its passage along the Channel.
The person on board the vessel told the Coastguard the ship was due to arrive in Bejaia in northern Algeria on August 4 at 11pm.
But its whereabouts now are a mystery, amid reports that the Russian navy is to deploy vessels to help locate the missing ship.
It was last recorded on a ship tracking system off the coast of Brest, northern France, just before 1.30am on July 30.
The MCA said it was told the vessel had later been spotted by a Portuguese coastal patrol aircraft but its current whereabouts were unknown.
Mr Clark told Sky News: "In our experience this is unprecedented. This is piracy in a first world area - it's virtually unknown.
"We were only alerted after the ship had passed through the Strait (of Dover) that there was something unusual about the vessel which sparked our interest... and obviously we're concerned about what's happening to these people."
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We hear about it happening all the time off the coast of Somalia but if it starts happening as often in the first world it could become very serious.
How is it so easy for pirates to board these ships?
Today, 12:13 am
SkyNews © Sky News 2009
Maritime authorities are trying to trace a cargo ship last heard of passing through the English Channel they fear may have been captured by pirates.
The Maltese-registered Arctic Sea, which has a Russian crew, spoke to the Dover Coastguard on July 28 but has not been heard from since.
Four days earlier she had apparently been boarded in the Baltic Sea.
The intruders appear to have left the ship some 12 hours later on a high-speed inflatable and allowed the vessel to continue on its passage but with its communications equipment damaged.
However, there are fears that the 3,988tn ship, carrying about £1m worth of sawn timber from Finland to Algeria, was still under the control of pirates when contact was made with the British Coastguards.
Mark Clark, of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, said Dover Coastguard did not suspect anything untoward as a supposed crew member made radio contact before the ship made its passage along the Channel.
The person on board the vessel told the Coastguard the ship was due to arrive in Bejaia in northern Algeria on August 4 at 11pm.
But its whereabouts now are a mystery, amid reports that the Russian navy is to deploy vessels to help locate the missing ship.
It was last recorded on a ship tracking system off the coast of Brest, northern France, just before 1.30am on July 30.
The MCA said it was told the vessel had later been spotted by a Portuguese coastal patrol aircraft but its current whereabouts were unknown.
Mr Clark told Sky News: "In our experience this is unprecedented. This is piracy in a first world area - it's virtually unknown.
"We were only alerted after the ship had passed through the Strait (of Dover) that there was something unusual about the vessel which sparked our interest... and obviously we're concerned about what's happening to these people."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We hear about it happening all the time off the coast of Somalia but if it starts happening as often in the first world it could become very serious.
How is it so easy for pirates to board these ships?
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