Car Carrier Asian Glory Freed

After six months in pirate hands, the car carrier Asian Glory was freed last week after the owners paid a ransom to the Somali privateers who had held the vessel since New Year’s Day. The Asian Glory was taking a load of Korean cars to Jeddah in western Saudi Arabia, which meant it had to run the vulnerable gauntlet area off of Somalia where the pirate presence is the strongest. Somalia is currently divided into a number of regional governments, some of which seem to encourage the pirates, who are a growth industry in that very poor country; a $5 million-or-so ransom payment goes a long way in a region wracked by civil war and without any major industry or export goods.

Without any opposition from the Somali authorities (such as they are), the pirate enclaves have been hard to stop. A multinational task force has been trying to keep the Somalis at bay, but the pirates often move to other areas to snag ships. While ransom is generally not encouraged by governments, it is often a viable business expense if the alternative is having a ship’s crew held captive and the ship’s inventory losing value while sitting in a Somali port or being used as a mothership for further raiding.

Car transporters moving cars from Asia to Europe have to make decisions on whether to use the Suez Canal and run the ship past the pirate’s home turf at the foot of the Red Sea or take a much longer route around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. The Northeast Passage north of Russia and Norway might be a possibility in the future if sea ice continues to decrease, but it isn’t an option at present. Ice-breaking container ships are in the works for such an Arctic-skirting run; might an ice-breaking car hauler be too far in the future?