AP
Nairobi, Apr 9: In a riveting high-seas drama, an unarmed crew wrested control of their US-flagged cargo ship from Somali pirates Wednesday and sent them fleeing to a lifeboat with the captain as hostage.
A US warship and at least six others were speeding toward the ship as crew members negotiated with the pirates for the return of the captain.
Details of the day's events emerged sporadically as members of the American crew were reached by satellite phone, providing a glimpse of the maneuvering.
A sailor said the entire 20-member crew had been taken hostage but managed to seize one pirate and then successfully negotiate their own release. The man did not identify himself during the brief conversation.
The crisis played out hundreds of miles off the coast of Somalia — one of the most lawless nations on earth. President Barack Obama was following the situation closely, foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough said.
The Maersk Alabama was the sixth vessel seized by Somalis pirates in a week. Pirates have staged 66 attacks since January, and they are still holding 14 ships and 260 crew members as hostages, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a watchdog group based in Kuala Lumpur.
Somalia's 1,900-mile (3,057-kilometer) long coastline borders one of the world's busiest shipping lanes and offers a perfect haven to the heavily armed pirate gangs. They often dress in military fatigues and use GPS systems and satellite phones to coordinate attacks from small, fast speedboats resupplied by a larger ``mother ship.''
The pirates usually use rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank rocket launchers and automatic weapons to capture large, slow-moving vessels like the US-flagged 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama, which was carrying food aid for Uganda and Somalia.
According to reports from the crew, the pirates sank their boat when they boarded the ship and the captain talked them into getting off the vessel using one of its lifeboats. The crew held one of the pirates hostage for 12 hours. They returned him in an attempted swap for the captain, but the pirates reneged on the deal.
``The Somali pirates have one of our crew members on our lifeboat and we are trying to recover that crew member,'' Colin Wright, the ship's third mate, said.
Maersk Line Limited CEO John F. Reinhart said his company received a call that indicated the crewmen were safe. But the call got cut off, and the company could not ask any more questions.
It remained unclear how the unarmed sailors could have overpowered pirates armed with automatic weapons.
The ship was taken about 380 miles (610 kilometers) east of the Somali capital of Mogadishu. Analysts say many of the pirates have shifted their operations down the Somali coastline from the Gulf of Aden to escape naval warship patrols.
Reinhart said the company's vessels had received a heightened alert about piracy activity. He did not have particulars about how the ship was taken, but said the crew's orders were to hide in safe rooms until aid came. They did not have weapons, he said, and typically, their defense would be to fight the pirates off with fire hoses as they climbed up the stern.