Arming ships averts piracy, engineer says

If armed guards had been aboard the Maersk Alabama on April 8, Mike Perry says, he would never have had to fight with a Somali pirate, the pirates would never have boarded and his captain would never have been taken hostage.

Perry, who lives in Riverview, helped capture a Somali pirate who made it aboard the U.S.-flagged ship that day.

Guards, whom Perry petitioned Congress for in the wake of the infamous attack, fought off another assault this week by Somali pirates, who never boarded the vessel.

Personnel from Trident Group Ltd., a private security firm hired by Maersk Line, repelled the pirates using guns and a device known as a long range acoustic device, which blasts sound waves.

"They did what needed to be done," Perry says from his home, where he just returned from another three-month tour of duty as chief engineer aboard the massive cargo ship.

History would be different had the guards been onboard in April or if Perry and his shipmates had been armed, he says.

"If we had one gun back on April 8, it would have been a completely different case," he says. "These people don't come when there is a gun. They leave. When you fire back, they go away."

Three pirates were killed in April, but that was after the ship was captured and the shots were fired by Navy SEALs brought in after the attack.

Perry says he got off the ship after 102 days at sea about a week before it was attacked again. He was spurred to talk about the most recent incident, he says, after reading comments from fellow crew members that the Maersk Line should have renamed the ship after the first attack.

"Pirates don't look at the name of the ship; they look at it as a target," he says. "Maersk has put bunches of money into the security of the boat. I am satisfied."

Perry, however, is not satisfied with how Richard Phillips, the Maersk Alabama's captain at the time of April's attack, handled the situation.

Phillips, who was hailed as a hero after being captured by the pirates and held on a lifeboat until the Navy sharpshooters took out his captors, ignored several warnings sent by Maersk to avoid the area, Perry says.

Perry says he has obtained several e-mail messages from Maersk to its captains at the time telling them about the dangers in the area.

The messages, Perry says, told ships to stay 600 miles off the coast of Somalia. Pirates boarded the Maersk 300 miles off the coast.

Phillips did not return a call for comment.

Maersk spokesman Kevin Speers would not comment on Perry's assertion that Phillips ignored warnings. He did, however, say the company will now check its email logs from that time.

"Our approach is singular," he says. "Our concern is with the safety of the crew and their ability to do their job in ship."