PIRACY’S BIG INSURANCE SECRET
You have a ship and you want to carry 100,000 Chinese Lanterns from Shanghai to Britain. Your ship will eventually sail through the Suez having passed the Horn of Africa. Already this year , there have been at least 200 attempted hijackings of ships travelling through the region. Without doubt you will prepare the ship for every eventuality it might face but there is one other threat that you can do little about – the taking of your ship by pirates. Inevitably, a ransom of about $4 million will be demanded , if you could avoid paying the ransom you would but as a precautionary measure you are going to have to turn to one of the most secretive insurance markets in the world for help, the Kidnap and Ransom Insurance market.
It is a well-established market but it is one that can be very difficult to penetrate. Why is this? How does it operate and does it help to keep the business of piracy afloat?

PIRACY MAP (Weekly View)

The difference between this map and the Live Piracy Map produced by the International Maritime Bureau  is that it gives a week by week view of where pirate attacks are taking place around the world. The difficulty of the IMB map is that over a year, pins detailing individual incidents become so crowded that it is difficult to spot up to date piracy hotspots or to quickly identify trends in particular areas.Ideally, maps would be updated daily and then archived every month . Available information would then include the previous month plus the current month. 

 

 

 

" 9. Notes with concern the findings....that escalating ransom payments are fuelling the growth of piracy" - UN Security Council Resolution 1851 (2008)

 

 

CAPTURED BY PIRATES!
A 70 year old Captain was held by pirates off the coast of Somalia in 2008.

He had been asked to deliver a tug, the m/v Svitzer Korsakov, by its Russian owners  to Singapore when he found himself  in the midst of a pirate attack. He and his small crew, were held for a total of 47 days before a ransom arrived and the ship was released. This is a shortened summary of my hour long interview with him. His phlegmatic re-telling of events suggest someone who remained very calm and collected throughout the  crisis.