Ship captain 'kept his cool'

2005-11-06 14:26

London - The captain of a luxury cruise liner that came under attack by pirates this weekend off Somalia was praised by one of his passengers for keeping his cool under fire.

Norman Fisher, 55, a lawyer from Hampstead Garden Suburb, north London, said he was awake on the Seabourn Spirit doing some early-morning work on Saturday "when I heard what sounded like a crack from outside at 05:50."

"I looked out of the window and saw a small boat with about five people in it about 20m away, said Fisher, quoted by Britain's domestic Press Association news agency Sunday.

"One of them clearly had a rifle. Later I realised that two of them had rifles and one had some kind of rocket launcher."

"They were firing the rifle and then fired the rocket launcher twice. One of the rockets certainly hit the ship - it went through the side of the liner into a passenger's suite. The couple were in there at the time so it was a bit of an unpleasant experience."

Fisher said the captain, Sven Erik Pedersen, refrained from sounding "the usual alarm" for fear that passengers might run up on deck thinking a fire had broken out - and exposing them to gunfire.

"Instead he made an announcement at five past six, saying: 'Stay inside, stay inside, we are under attack'. Then he told us to go to the restaurant in the middle of the ship and wait."

"The atmosphere in the restaurant was a little tense. People were pretty good and they weren't panicking, but one or two were certainly looking nervous," Fisher said.

"The captain came in at about 06:30 and explained what was going on and said he was reasonably confident we had lost them. Of course he got a massive round of applause."

The US-owned, Bahamian-flagged Seabourn Spirit, which was heading to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, changed its itinerary after the attack and was due to reach the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean on Monday.

- AFP