| 2023 | 120? |
| 2023 | 115 |
| 2013 | 264 |
| 2012 | 439 |
| 2000 | 471 |
* Totals from International Maritime Bureau
How many ships are on the water? UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2023 counts precisely 105,395 large cargo ships, defined as vessels of 100 deadweight tons or more. Other less exact sources find the world’s navies operating about 10,000 boats; wealthy individuals and tourists sailing around in about 10,800 cruise ships and pleasure yachts; and (per the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization) about 45,000 large factory-style fishing ships. So, altogether about 170,000 large ships.
And how often do pirates attack these ships? Since 1992, the International Maritime Bureau, a consortium based in Kuala Lumpur, has been answering this question with quarterly reports based on notifications by shipowners. In 2022 IMB found 115 attacks, ranging from unarmed burglaries of ships in berth to gunpoint hijacks of ships on the high seas. This year they report 99 attacks from January through October 2023, which is about the same as the 97 attacks reported from Jan.-Oct. 2021, and a bit more than the 90 in Jan.-Oct. 2022. So pirate attacks have been pretty stable over the last three years at about two each week. Some more context on this:
Piracy attack rates have fallen sharply: From 2000 to 2014, IMB was reporting between 300 and 500 pirate attacks per year. The 115 attacks in 2022 were the lowest in its records, down nearly 75% from the 439 reported in 2012. The largest reason for this drop is the near-elimination of attacks off the Horn of Africa, after the suppression of Somalia’s industrial-scale pirate fleet by an international naval consortium, Combined Task Force 151, between 2012 and 2015. Attacks in Southeast Asia and West Africa, always more opportunistic and smaller scale than the Somali pirate industry, have also declined.
High-seas piracy accounts for about 40% of all pirate attacks: Somalia’s pirate industry involved large-scale organized attacks on high-seas shipping passing through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait (separating Yemen and Somalia) and the Gulf of Aden, aiming to take control of the targeted vessels, sell their cargoes, and hold their crews for ransom. This involved operations far offshore, in which pirate gangs used converted fishery vessels to carry fleets of speedboats for attacks on ships using automatic weapons. The typical current attack is much less ambitious, usually involving an opportunistic effort by a small group, often with knives rather than guns, to rob a ship at anchor or sailing close to shore. IMB’s count through October included 51 attacks on ships either anchored offshore or berthed at a dock, and 37 en route. Thirty of these 37 high-seas attacks took place in the Singapore Strait, and three involved actual hijackings – up from one hijacking each in 2021 and 2022m but still far below the 49 hijackings of 2012. A sample report from IMB two weeks ago describes a standard 2023 attack:
22.11.2023: 2135 UTC: Posn: 01:43.20N – 101:26.72E, Dumai Anchorage, Indonesia.
Four robbers armed with knives boarded an anchored tanker. They threatened and took hostage the duty AB while the OS managed to escape and inform the Duty Officer. Alarm raised and crew mustered. Seeing the crew alertness, the perpetrators escaped empty handed.
Pirate attacks are now most common in maritime Southeast Asia: Thirty-three of IMB’s 99 reported pirate attacks took place in the Singapore Strait, a 65-mile stretch of water which (per the Lowy Institute) handles about 1,000 ship transits daily. Maritime Southeast Asia generally is the site of nearly half — 51 of 115 — of this year’s attacks. (And Singapore-based RECAAP has a higher tally, of 98 attacks in Southeast Asia through the end of November.) Elsewhere, IMB reports 23 pirate attacks off Africa, 16 off South America, and none in the Mediterranean or North Atlantic.
Cargo ships are most frequently attacked: Most pirate attacks, by IMB’s count, target large ships carrying cargo, presumably as they are lightly defended — a very large container ship carrying 8,000 or more boxes may have only 20 crew members — and carry potentially valuable goods. The 99 attacks so far this year included 37 on tankers, 40 on bulk carriers, 14 on container ships, and 8 on all other kinds of shipping. IMB has no record of an attack over the last five years on a large fishing boat, a cruise ship or yachts, or a naval vessel.
Special note: PPI’s Trade and Global Markets staff will be on vacation next week, and the Trade Fact service will take the week off. We wish friends and readers a happy holiday season, and will be back next year.
Data:
The International Maritime Bureau, noting the lowest piracy rate in a generation, is concerned about a rise in violent attacks this year.
Singapore-based Information Sharing Center for the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy (RECAAP) reports incidents and helps coordinate anti-piracy operations in Southeast Asia.
UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport counts ships (in Chapter 2).
Policy:
Command Task Force 151, led this spring by Korea and now by the Philippines, patrols Somali waters.
And the U.S. Navy monitors the “Houthi” militia now threatening the Bab-el-Mandeb passage and Red Sea shipping from the Yemeni side.
NATO on counter-piracy missions.
And Sydney-based Lowy Institute looks at piracy in the Singapore Strait.
And some look-backs:
The Brookings Institution has background on the Somali pirate industry.
The standard dates and geography for the “Golden Age of Piracy” — Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, unlucky Captain Kidd, famous female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Reade, master of the game Henry Avery — are respectively (a) 1650-1720 and (b) much of the world. Kidd’s especially well-documented pirate voyage took him from Boston to London, then to Madagascar and the Indian Ocean littoral (where he unwisely targeted one of Emperor Aurangzeb’s ships), and back to the Caribbean before he got caught. The Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich has lots of good material.
For the big picture on pirate life, David Cordingly’s Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates.
And Robert Ritchie’s Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates zooms in on William Kidd, his murky connections with the Whig Party leadership in London and the Boston city government, and his allegedly lost treasure (don’t bother to look).
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
