NAVY NEWS, SEPTEMBER 2008 25
● Anatomy of a drugs bust... Montrose’s boarding party approach the
suspicious dhow (left); one of the team crawls into a secret compartment
(above) and the fruits of their labours (right) £20m of drugs piled up on
the boat’s upper deck
Forces for good
S
UNDAY April 20 and Monday April 21 2008 08
between three distinct group in the Gulf presently.
are days which will probably not register er
international naval forces – But with the Royal
much on the historical Richter scale.
Combined Task Forces 150, 152 Marines either just back from
and 158: Afghanistan (40 Commando), or
Westminster was all of a There were chaotic sounds s about to deploy to Afghanistan
flutter, as Westminster tends to aboard the Faisal Mustafa,
While the Navy’s strength in
■ 158 safeguards Iraq’s two
be, over the 10p tax rate. a dhow bound for India,
oil terminals;
(3 Commando Brigade),
Barack Obama and Hillary shouting, then silence. The
Afghanistan ebbs and fl ows, it
there’s not a great deal for an
■ 150 casts its net from the
Clinton were trading insults radio went dead.
maintains a constant – and sizeable –
coast of Kenya to the Strait
amphibious task group to do...
(again) in the race for the A few minutes later, presence in the Gulf, and not just
of Hormuz and the shores
It would, of course, be wrong
Whitehouse. the Dolphin heard the
the waters off Iraq, as Richard
of Pakistan;
to have an experienced staff
stuck back in Plymouth when
The ubiquitous (and troubled) comforting sound of HMS
■ 152 is something
singer Amy Winehouse was in Chatham’s Lynx overhead.
Hargreaves reports. of a ‘forgotten fl eet’ –
there’s an important naval job to
the news once more – this time The Dolphin continued
undeservedly.
be done.
d So the commodore and
for the right reasons, nominated on her way towards Djibouti, uti, , For a start, its realm is B I G. his team have swapped the
for several awards. passing through waters guarded edd 65,000 square miles of ‘big’ imposing stone edifi ce of
Former deputy prime minister by the German frigate Emden.
the news columns for the night Inside were MP3 players,
– from the southern border of
Stonehouse for a sandy-
John Prescott revealed he had Seven hours later, more radio
and day of the pirates. batteries, toy dinosaurs, guitars,
Kuwait to Hormuz. coloured portable cabin in
battled with bulimia for years. chatter. Another Mayday, this
Hardly surprisingly, a computers, sofas, pet food,
And secondly – and more Bahrain.
And off the coast of Somalia, time from a Japanese tanker.
frustrated Johan Lillkung cutlery, tea, frozen chickens and
importantly – it’s the fuel pump “The UK makes a signifi cant
Swedish skipper Johan Lillkung The Takayama was peppered
pleaded in his log: Politicians of lamb, mussels, tuna, noodles,
of the world. contribution in the Gulf and it’s
was returning the 88ft yacht with small arms fi re and her hull
the world, do something. biscuits.
We have banged on about quite right that we do so,” Cdre
Dolphin to Spain after wintering penetrated by a rocket-propelled
Had anything halted Emma
the importance of the two oil Hudson stresses.
around the Seychelles and grenade.
Why should ‘the politicians of Maersk’s progress, then
platforms at the tip of the Gulf “Our ‘parish’ is the area which
Maldives.
the world’ care? Christmas truly would have been
The ‘night of the pirates’ – the Khawr Al Amaya and Al makes the world tick.
Lillkung and his crew were
Why should we here in our cancelled.
was not yet over. A small Basra terminals – month in, “For the countries in this
uneasy. A week earlier, before
comfortable homes in the It was not.
merchantman was seized by month out. region, this is a vital task.
casting off from the Maldives,
UK worry about thieves and The leviathan arrived safely.
marauders just off the Somalian But Iraq’s two platforms – “Maritime trade can only go
the skipper had checked with
marauders holding yachtsmen, She came from China. She came
coast. Half an hour later, more important as they are to that on if the environment is secure
the International Maritime
fi shermen, and tankermen to via the Indian Ocean – like two
bloodthirsty raiders boarded a country’s economic future – are and safe.”
Bureau in Kuala Lumpur.
ransom 3,000 miles away? out of every three ships which
Spanish fi shing boat. the tip of the, er, oil fi eld. Ah yes, maritime trade. As
Since the French yacht Le
Because these waters are the do business in great waters.
“Our only comfort is seeing Two out of every three barrels well as being home to just shy of
Ponant had been seized, the
lifeblood of On the
helicopters fl ying overhead once of oil produced come from the 1,000 oil and gas platforms and
Bureau told the Swede, there
our country, high seas,
in a while and the occasional oilfi elds of the Middle East. installations, the Gulf region is
had been no more pirate
as surely as
“If you want to pick
the Indian
warship,” Lillkung recorded in Each day 2½ million barrels
also increasingly a hub for trade
attacks.
are the Strait Ocean is the
his log. an area which defi nes of oil pass through the Strait of
on the high seas.
But that, Lillkung thought,
of Dover, the crossroads of
And then it was Dolphin’s
was two weeks ago.
North Sea, globalisation, then this the world.
Hormuz – that’s $4bn daily.
Three decades ago, Jebel Ali
turn. Little more than two dozen
Now Dolphin was bearing
the Solent.
is it.”
But it’s
If that’s not enough to make
was a fi shing village between
miles off the shores of Yemen,
Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
down on the Gulf of Aden –
“When
– Cdre Peter Hudson
also ‘Pirate
your jaw drop to the fl oor, 40
two small speed boats began per cent of the world’s gas also
Today, Jebel Ali is the eighth
branded ‘Pirate Alley’ by
trade in the Alley’. And
racing towards the yacht. comes from here (the UK is a
largest port in the world, used
mariners. And with good reason.
seas here the ‘Hashish
Lillkung immediately flashed major customer, for example, of
by 128,000 vessels each year.
More than $2.5m has been
stops, then Highway’.
an SOS. Within ten minutes a Qatari gas).
It deals with three times more
handed to mauraders since the
trade in the UK stops,” Cdr Andy And that explains why, in time
Spanish warship was barrelling “If you want to pick an area
trade than Britain’s principal
turn of the year.
Hogben, Commanding Offi cer of honoured fashion, the Navy’s
down on Dolphin’s position and which defi nes globalisation, then
port, Felixstowe.
With night shrouding the
HMS Montrose, says succinctly. here.
a US Marine Corps aircraft was this is it,” explains Cdre Peter
And Jebel Ali is not alone.
gateway to the Red Sea,
Not convinced? Two years ago there were
overhead, buzzing around the
Suez and the world beyond,
Well, cast your mind back to three ships under the command Hudson, the British commander
Trade at Fujairah on the east
Lillkung and his crew studied
suspicious craft – which had the autumn of 2006. of the UK Maritime Component of CTF 152.
coast of the Arabian Peninsula
the Dolphin’s radar anxiously
closed to within a mile of the Arriving in Felixstowe docks Commander – the Bahrain- More attentive readers of
is mushrooming. Bahrain is
or scanned the horizon with
yacht. was the Emma Maersk 3, a based staff who direct maritime Navy News will recognise the
booming. The skylines of Abu
binoculars.
In the space of 20 hours, rather unassuming name for the security operations in the Gulf Commodore as Commander
Dhabi and Dubai are dominated
The radio crackled into life.
‘Pirate Alley’ had lived up to its largest container ship on the and Indian Ocean. Today there Amphibious Task Group (or
by cranes as yet more high rises
name: fi ve attacks on shipping seven seas. are 14 warships, auxiliaries and COMATG in the wonderful world
go up.
Merciful God, can somebody or near misses. Piled high on its decks were air squadrons under the control of RN acronyms).
These cities, states and
help us, the pirates are Amid tax rows, bulimic 11,000 containers – 3,000 of Cdre Keith Winstanley and his Equally astute readers of
emirates – and others – follow
boarding. Merciful God, politicians and soul singers, for Britain, the rest for other team. Navy News will also recognise
what the men and women of
help us please. there was barely, if any, space in European states. It is a domain dissected that there’s no amphibious task marina Continued on page 26
● ‘These dhows are fi lthy, hot, there’s little food, little water, and our lads get right in the thick of it’... HMS
Montrose’s boarding party inspect a suspicious vessel in the Gulf of Aden, watched over by the mother ship
0025-027_NN_Sept.indd 125-027_NN_Sept.indd 1 119/8/08 15:38:129/8/08 15:38:12
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