Word: shipful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Mahalingam alerted his chief officer, and turned the ship to starboard. But before he could issue a distress signal, three fiberglass speedboats with powerful outboard motors had pulled alongside the Semlow, a 58-m cargo boat often chartered by the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) to ship aid to Africa's neediest. The pirates hooked a small metal ladder to the ship and scrambled aboard. "There were 15 to 20 men wearing shorts and T shirts," remembers Mahalingam. The boarders were barefoot but carrying pistols, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. The pirates rushed to the bridge where, in halting...
...most dangerous in the world for sailors. Somalia's pirates used to be small fish compared to the bandits who strike in Asia's Malacca Straits and South China Sea. But over the past seven months, Somali pirates have attacked 25 vessels, including the Semlow in June, another ship carrying food aid in September, a Maltese-registered cargo ship carrying 15 tons of iron ore, and, just last weekend, a cruise ship with some 300 American and British holidaymakers aboard. (Though the pirates fired semiautomatic weapons and a rocket-propelled grenade, the ship's crew used an on-board "acoustic...
...That's what happened with the Semlow. After taking control of the ship, the pirates stole $8,500 from Mahalingam's safe and ransacked the crew's cabins. Then they forced the crew to set a course towards the central Somali town of Ceel Huur, where the Semlow dropped anchor within sight of land. "I told the pirates that we were carrying cargo that belonged to all Somalians," says Mahalingam. "I said, 'This is for your own people. Why are you doing this...
...reply. A man arrived from the mainland with a note. It told Mahalingam to radio the Semlow's owners in Mombasa, Kenya, and give them two telephone numbers: one for a mobile phone, the other for a Thuraya satellite phone. Inayet Kudrati, 54, director of the Motaku Shipping Agency, which has had three of its four boats hijacked by Somali pirates since June, received the call and was eventually told he should pay $500,000 if he wanted the ship and crew back. "I told them I didn't have that kind of money," says Kudrati...
...Spero, the chief technology officer for the NBA's New Orleans Hornets, drove to the team's training facility in Westwego, La., with a fellow Hornets employee and two friends. Their mission: to retrieve the team's teal uniforms, a batch of video equipment and a few computers to ship to another city when--or if--the Hornets started their preseason training camp. Reports of violence and looting had spread to Westwego; the team's tech guy carried a shotgun for protection. The military had taken over the facility, so to grab the supplies, Spero's crew had to duck...