Where's Johnny Depp when we need him.


"Joe" wrote in message oups.com...
| MIAMI (Reuters) - Pirates firing rocket-mounted grenades and machine
| guns tried to board a U.S.-owned cruise ship in the Indian Ocean on
| Saturday but the vessel carrying more than 300 people escaped and no
| one was hurt, its owners said.
|
| Men in two small boats approached the Seabourn Cruise Line ship Spirit
| about 100 miles off the Somali coast, fired on it and sought to board
| the 10,000-ton vessel in an apparent bid to rob the passengers and
| crew, cruise line spokesman Bruce Good said.
|
| "The crew responded with a trained response that they do to keep people
| from getting on the ship. They managed to evade them, repel them and
| keep them off the ship," Good said.
|
| The 161-member crew gathered the 151 passengers into a central lounge
| away from windows and decks during the attack, he said.
|
| "There were some windows broken, nothing that affected seaworthiness,"
| Good said. "The crew did an excellent job and those guys gave up. ...
| These guys didn't plan this too well."
|
| The cruise line's president, Deborah Natansohn, told CNN that the
| attackers used machine guns and rocket-mounted grenades.
|
| Pirates are not uncommon off the Somali coast, but typically they
| target freighters that carry only a handful of crewmembers.
|
| The Bahamian-registered Seabourn ship was on a 16-day cruise from Egypt
| to Mombasa, Kenya. It sailed on to the Seychelles Islands, where
| passengers were to disembark and fly to Mombasa, Good said.
|
| Seabourn is headquartered in Miami and is a subsidiary of Carnival
| Corp., the world's largest cruise group.
|
| The Spirit's passengers included 48 Americans, 22 from the United
| Kingdom, 21 Canadians, 19 Germans, 19 Australians and six South
| Africans. The others were mostly from other European nations, Good
| said.
|
| He said authorities in the United States, United Kingdom and Seychelles
| were investigating.
|
| The Somali coast is one of the world's most dangerous places. In
| October, Somali pirates captured a ship carrying food aid for the
| United Nations' World Food Program and held it for two days before
| releasing the vessel, crew and cargo.
|
| Earlier in October, pirates released another ship carrying relief food
| after it and its crew were held for nearly 100 days.
|