Passengers on an around-the-world cruise had to spend 10 nights in darkness out of fear Somali pirates might attack, one traveler claims in a new essay.
Carolyne Jasinski, an Australian media specialist who often writes about travel, says passengers also went through drills to prepare for a plausible ambush at sea.
Travelers started to notice something odd when all night activities were banned as the Sea Princess made her way through the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal in early June, Jasinski wrote in an essay for news.com.au.
Curtains were drawn once the sun went down, and there weren’t any moonlit festivities on the deck.
“She was a ghost ship,” wrote Jasinski, who was on the cruise’s first leg of the trip. “What on earth was going on?”
After rumors about a terror attack started to spread throughout the vessel, its captain told the 1,900 passengers that a pirate attack could be near.
“This was really serious — and now the night-time ban on outdoor entertainment did not seem like such a hardship,” she wrote. “The captain announced that as well as the dusk-til-dawn blockout, as part of the preparations, we would have a compulsory pirate drill.”
The 856-foot Sea Princess, operated by Princess Cruises, departed New Zealand in May for a worldwide trip that finishes in September.
Once the crew notified the travelers — some of whom paid a reported $50,000 for the whole trip — they immediately began to take it seriously, Jasinski claimed.
“It was made very clear on the Sea Princess, very quickly, that this pirate threat was not something to be joked about,” Jasinski wrote in the essay published Monday. “Any remaining smirks soon disappeared as the pirate drill alarm sounded and the crew was instructed to move to their designated muster stations.”
Sirens would go off, which sent passengers into the ship’s 1,008 cabins where crewmembers could do a headcount.
“They were advised to sit on the floor and to hang on to hand rails in case the ship had to manoeuvre away from pirate ships,” she wrote. “In the case of a real threat, those passengers in outside cabins were told to close and lock their balcony doors, then lock their entrance door to their cabin and take shelter in the corridors.”
Only a few passengers resisted taking part, she said.
Somali pirates often approach cruise ships on small skiffs, armed with rifles and ladders to scale the towering hull of a high-seas vessel.
Water hoses were set up on Deck Seven, which Jasinski said was a common walking spot for cruisers but vulnerable to an attack. Detergent was put in the water to force would-be attackers off their ladders.
“If all else failed, there was the sonic boom — we were told it can knock pirates off their feet (or ladders if they get too close),” wrote Jasinski, who added she was assigned to a watch station during drills.
While no attack ever took place, the travelers remained vigilant for the rest of Jasinski’s stay.
“Many calls were made to the bridge to report suspicious boats,” she wrote. “(The captain) had to ask passengers to stop calling and to trust in the officers who were on watch.”
Princess Cruises declined to discuss specific security measures it takes, adding piracy training was normal for troubled seas.
“In addition to our normal ongoing security training, additional piracy specific training is conducted prior to any of our vessels entering areas of concern,” the company said. “Any measures aboard Sea Princess were simply taken out of an abundance caution and not in response to a specific threat and are common to international shipping sailing in the region.”
Somali pirates are often feared in the Indian Ocean. Their 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama was dramatized four years later in the film “Captain Phillips.”
In March, a team of Somali pirates took over the Aris 13 — a fuel tanker headed for Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.
The attack was the first commercial pirate ambush since 2012, officials said at the time.
