Africa News
Pirates abandon German freighter after crew hides (1st Lead)
Oct 25, 2010, 16:45 GMT
Bremen, Germany - Pirates, probably from Somalia, who seized a German freighter abandoned the vessel within hours after the crew went into hiding, the shipping company said in Bremen on Monday.
The pirates had gone by the time the British frigate Montrose arrived after steaming 15 hours over the Indian Ocean to the aid of the break-bulk carrier Beluga Fortune. All the crew of 16 were safe, the Beluga shipping company told a newspaper, the Weser Kurier.
German shipping companies have developed a standard procedure of shutting down all power and hiding the crew when a ship is attacked.
British Navy sailors boarded the Beluga Fortune at noon on Monday, 1,200 nautical miles east of Mombassa, after the Montrose had swung alongside.
'Our precautions and concentrated training of the crew worked out very well,' said a relieved Niels Stolberg, chief executive of Beluga Shipping, a company which works with specialized cargoes.
The crew radioed at 7 am Sunday that pirates were attempting to board, and immediately stopped the engine, blocked the fuel line and switched off all systems on the bridge. That meant the pirates could not get the captured ship to move.
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