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John Bailey is not a natural diplomat.
As careful negotiations were continuing to secure the safe release of the crew of the hijacked Sirius Star, the Hornsea mariner's own suggestion for dealing with the growing problem of piracy is rather more blunt.
"You don't stop pirates by talking to them," he says with the kind of pragmatism which comes after decades at sea. "You stop them by aiming guns at them."
Still he should know. Seven years ago, Bailey was marine supervisor on board an elderly tanker in waters near Sierra Leone when he was woken in the early hours by the sound of machine guns being cocked outside his cabin door.
Less experienced seamen might have pulled the covers over their head and prayed for divine intervention, but Bailey, then 52, instinctively grabbed the gun beside his bed and jumped into action. He didn't even bother getting dressed.
The 10-strong pirate gang had already overpowered one officer, but confronted by the naked Yorkshireman armed with a pump-action shotgun, their plans to make off with the ship's cargo of cash began to unravel.
"While we were taken by surprise, we always knew there was a possibility of a pirate attack," says the 60-year-old veteran of African waters. "The tanker was an off-shore fuel station for fishing boats so we had a lot of money on board, but the Russian crew were pretty lax when it came to security.
"When I woke up, the pirates were already trying to force their way into the captain's cabin and I came face to face with one of them, who tried to fire his Kalashnikov. Thankfully, it jammed and it gave me a few seconds to retaliate. As I fired my own gun, he tried to escape leaving behind a trail of blood.
"It was very dark, but we could see the gang's boat near to our ship. We couldn't see anyone on it, but I fired two magazines in its direction and it drifted off into the dark. It's something I'll never forget, but it didn't leave me feeling particularly traumatised."
While Bailey's encounter with pirates seems like a particularly dramatic boy's own adventure, increasing numbers of ships are being targeted by armed gangs in search of easy pickings.
So far this year, nine crew members have been killed in pirate attacks, the same number are missing, presumed dead, and 581 have been taken hostage. With a third of all ambushes taking place in the sea near Somalia, the African coast has become a piracy hotspot and the International Maritime Bureau now estimate that more than 1,200 Somalis and at least six major groups are involved.
It is a lucrative business. The ransom paid to gangs has risen from $10,000 to $1m in recent years and the higher stakes have brought ever more audacious attacks.
"Piracy may have now come to the public's attention now, but it's always been a problem in that part of the world," says Bailey. "It started small-scale, but because ship owners are reluctant to take direct action it has escalated. Companies have to abide by
so many health and safety regulations and much of the shipping industry now views on- board protection teams as too much of a potential risk.
"The general advice from the coastguard is always not to antagonise pirates. Gangs know that nine times out of 10 their demands will be met and there is absolutely no deterrent. Until piracy stops being easy money, they will continue to take ship after ship."
Currently, 10 other vessels and 250 crew members are thought to be in the hands of pirates and this week an Indian navy warship destroyed a suspect boat after it came under fire in the Gulf of Aden. In wake of an increasing number of incidents, some shipping owners have installed electrified fencing and satellite tracking, but neither would have provided adequate defence against the gang, armed with an anti-tank rocket launcher and grenades, who attacked the Sirius Star.
The hijack of the tanker, carrying some £67m of oil, some 420 nautical miles from the shore was also a departure from the norm. Piracy has tended to be concentrated nearer to the coastlines, but with the increasingly well armed, well-funded and well-organised operations casting their nets ever wider, detection is proving difficult.
"A few years ago, if you were anchored near to a coast you knew the situation was potentially dodgy," says Bailey. "But now ships are being targeted when they are miles away at sea. Ship owners are paying thousands of pounds to these criminals, because they think there's no other option. They are prepared to write off ransom demands against the value of the cargo, but it's just crazy.
"Patrols can only do so much, but the truth is it's easy to defend a ship against robbers. It would cost virtually nothing to have a protection team on board and if these gangs thought they might end up on the wrong end of two or three ex-Army guys they might actually think twice about doing it.
"Historically, merchant ships were always armed, but now they don't have the facilities to defend themselves and the gangs are winning. These pirates aren't straight out of a children's book, they are nasty pieces of work."
Bailey's run-in with pirates, who it later emerged were ex-rebel soldiers from Sierra Leone, wasn't the first or last time he would face dangers at sea. Three years earlier, when a rebellion of renegade soldiers attempted to topple the government of Guinea Bissau, near Senegal, he took his cargo ship to rescue the United States Ambassador and her staff from the former Portuguese colony.
More recently he has been working in fishing protection, tracking down the boats responsible for over-fishing in the West African seas.
"It's a massive problem," he says. "They're wiping out entire stocks of tuna and small fish and our job is to identify illegal operations and arrest them. Of course they don't like being told what to do, but we are there to do a job."
Bailey is currently on terra firma, enjoying a break at his Hornsea home, but he plans to be back on the water after Christmas.
"At some point I'll slow down," he says, acknowledging his 60th birthday just a few months away. "But just not yet.
TOLL OF THE MODERN PIRATES
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