Why is the crew of of a boat taken captive by pirates blames the captain?”
The boat belonging to kidnapped couple Paul and Rachel Chandler has been returned to the UK – as fears continue to mount over their safety. The couple from Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells, were kidnapped by Somali pirates on October 23 as they sailed from the Seychelles to Tanzania. Pirates boarded their yacht, the Lynn Rival, and took them first to a nearby tanker also under their control, and then to the mainland where they are being held captive. Since then a ransom for $7m (£4.2m) has been issued. It has subsequently emerged a Royal Navy vessel not only witnessed the couple being kidnapped but stood helplessly on as they were taken from the yacht. Now that Royal Navy ship – the Wave Knight – has returned the yacht to the UK. It was transported onboard the Wave Knight and arrived late last week in Portland, Dorset. Paul, 59, and Rachel Chandler, 55, had sold their former home in Tunbridge Wells and swapped it for a small flat and the yacht. The flat they rent out, the yacht they used
MONTPELIER, Vt. — Richard Phillips, the ship captain toasted as a hero after he was taken captive by Somali pirates, ignored repeated warnings last spring to keep his freighter at least 600 miles off the African coast because of the heightened risk of attack, some members of his crew now allege. Records obtained by The Associated Press show that maritime safety groups issued at least seven such warnings in the days before outlaws boarded the Maersk Alabama in the Gulf of Aden, about 380 miles offshore. A piracy expert and the captain’s second-in-command say Phillips had the prerogative to heed the warnings or not. But some crew members — including the chief engineer, the helmsman and the navigator — say he was negligent not to change course after learning of the pirate activity. “If you go to the grocery store and eight people get mugged on that street, wouldn’t you go a different way?” said the ship’s navigator, Ken Quinn, of Tampa, Fla. Sailing beyond the 600-mile threshold would hav
Richard Phillips, the ship captain toasted as a hero after he was taken captive by Somali pirates, ignored repeated warnings last spring to keep his freighter at least 600 miles off the African coast because of the heightened risk of attack, some members of his crew now allege. Records obtained by The Associated Press show that maritime safety groups issued at least seven such warnings in the days before outlaws boarded the Maersk Alabama in the Gulf of Aden, about 380 miles offshore.
