SOMALI PIRATES OPEN THEIR OWN WALL STREET

A Fine Batch of Brigands

 

THE PIRACY SERIES

SOMALI STOCK MARKET: BULLS, BEARS AND BUCCANEERS

Often when I am wearing my Special Interest Speaker hat and talking about Maritime Matters I discuss pirates: pirates of the seas we are transiting, pirates as romantic figures or sea-going felons, women pirates, famous pirates of history, pirate hangouts and what’s the difference between pirates and privateers. 

Usually the passengers like the talks but want to hear about pirates today.  Goodness knows, the 24 hour news cycle is hungry enough for content that it never passes up a juicy story about a yacht or tanker or fishing vessel or even a cruise ship attacked at sea by armed men.  Of course, cruise ship management is not interested in having me talk about something that makes the customers nervous. Would they be happy with me if I  gave graphic, illustrated chats about Norovirus or seasickness?  Of course not.

I have to admit though that, depending on the Cruise Director, the Entertainment Manager  and the audience, I do drop in a word or two about piracy today.  One of the least troubling mini-topics I do is about how crafty Somali entrepreneurs have created their own version of Wall Street with Piracy as the major business opportunity for folks who would like to put assets at risk to make big bucks.

Pirate Dhow Used as Mother Ship

For this topic, unlike most of my chats, I do not pretend to have personal knowledge or experience.  I have not shuffled around the tent cities along the shores of Somalia researching the topic.  My wife, insurance broker and residual good sense make that unlikely to have happened in the past or anytime soon.  I have had to rely on media reports for my material. 


We know that piracy has always been with us.  It waxes and wanes just  like any other human endeavor.  Reuters has covered the topic steadily since it became “news” within the past decade.  They covered the story of investing in piracy in late 2009 and continue to follow the topic today. 

Modern Pirate on SS Herol 2006

 Enough of the Back Story, here is the tale.


Haradheere is a grungy port on Somalia’s coast around 250 miles north of the nominal capital, Mogadishu.  For a grungy port it has a remarkable number of flashy new SUV and pickups.  Bling is the thing.  Although most of the people are Muslim, guzzling booze and chewing khat are major pursuits.  Prosperity through piracy is the key to the Wild West atmosphere in this Horn of Africa town.

There is no real Somali government nor has there been one for around twenty years. Somalia is the kind of place that would have to have a big development spurt to qualify as a failed state.  There are no schools, no police, no real institutions.  Nothing but the daily struggle to survive.  Even though that is so it appears that capitalism is some kind of natural instinct that comes to the fore even in the most unlikely settings.

A couple of years ago on a slow day, that is to say a regular Haradheere day, a batch of the lads sat around sheltered from the monsoonal rain and decided to open a stock exchange.  Hey, why not?  Wisely they decided to concentrate on the kind of business they knew, Piracy.  Starting with 15 entities they called ‘Maritime Companies’ they put the word out they were open for business.

In a place where there is little money there is little risk capital.  The founders realized that and right from the start accepted payments in kind in lieu of cash.  Payments in kind?  Wazzat?  You know, things the maritime companies could use in the business.  Things like diesel fuel, a boat, some rope or maybe a spare AK-47 or 9mm you have kicking around the house gathering dust. 

The People's Choice---an AK-47

 The investor usually puts up the capital for a specific voyage and gets paid from whatever bounty or booty the maritime company captures.  With ransoms for ships as high as $3 or 4 million bucks there is a lot of loot to divvy up even after paying off the local town council and any other folks mean enough or strong enough to deserve a share. 

As an aside, just about every society started its maritime industry using the same model. Investors put up the money or cargo for a voyage and participated in whatever profit there was for the venture.  The big difference with the Somali version is the focus on felony as the center of the business. (This is not to say that even nice people, business people, people like Americans or Englishmen or Spaniards or Frenchmen, etc, etc didn’t make money from piracy in the old days.)

From 15 Maritime Companies the exchange grew to over 75 firms in months.  It only took months for some of the first success stories to start the rounds to draw in the next batch of investors. 

One of the first stories was about a 22 year old divorcee who made $75,000 in 38 days from her share of the ransom of a Spanish fishing vessel.  How did a 22 year old woman get the capital to get into the mix?  Easy.  Alimony.  Her husband gave her a RPG, a Rocket Propelled Grenade as part of the marriage settlement.  That was her payment in kind.

Not Just Tools of the Trade, Capital for Investment

You gotta love it.  Capitalism triumphs again.

ALASKA IN WW II---BATTLE OF THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS

           ALASKA IN WWII---A SERIES
THE BATTLE OF THE PIPS, A NAVY TALE


As an American I can get away with saying that we Yanks are not really too good at History or Geography.  In fact, unless it just happened in the city we live in we probably didn’t hear about it.  I mention this because D-Day, the Sixth of June, just passed.  I happened to be talking about WWII with some fairly intelligent and well traveled friends who were planning a cruise to Alaska and I mentioned the War in the Pacific. I said that Alaska was one of the few American territories that were invaded during the war.  My reward for being a little known fact maven was the usual blank stare and wrinkled forehead that usually meant that the listener felt sorry for the poor old guy.

But, what I said was true.  Six months after Pearl Harbor, the famous battles at Guadalcanal were taking place in the South Pacific.  In June ’42 Japanese forces began to move toward Alaska.  The same task force that battled the U S Navy at the pivotal Battle of Midway near Hawaii sent a force to attack the Aleutian Islands, bombing Dutch Harbor in Unalaska and landing on Attu and Kiska Islands.  I will talk about the Japanese Invasion of America in another post.  Today I want to tell a Sea Story about How early Radar flipped the US Navy the Bird.

IDAHO SHOREBOMBARDING JAPANESE TROOPS AT KISKA

We fast forward to July 1943 when the United States got tired of having the Japanese troops living on American islands threatening to keep moving eastward to the sparsely occupied north west of the American Continent.  The US Navy and the Army Air Corps had flown over 1500 sorties hitting Japanese territory from the Aleutian Islands and succeeded in tying up 41,000 Japanese troops protecting their Homeland instead of taking part of the defense of the Pacific Islands that were being taken back one by one by Allied forces.

ADAK 1943

The Navy put together Task Force Gilbert, centered on a pair of pre-war Battleships, the USS MISSISSIPPI (BB-41) AND the USS IDAHO (BB42).  There were also a number of Heavy Cruisers and destroyers that made up the attack force.  The intention was to soften up the Japanese forces on Kiska and Attu with a bombardment by the 14” Naval Rifles of the battleships and 8” guns of the cruisers.



A BRIEF INTERLUDE WHERE YOU WILL LEARN MORE THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT YOU NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT BATTLESHIP GUNS

Bear with me for a bit.  When I was a lad, I was the Gun Captain of Gun 2, Turret  One on the USS WISCONSIN (BB-64).  I fired the 16” gun at targets that, thankfully, didn’t fire back.  Let me bore you a bit about what the Japanese troops on Attu and Kiska had to face.

On the MISSISSIPPI and the IDAHO, each ship had four turrets with three 14” 50 cal Naval Rifles, a total of twelve big guns.  The 14 incher could throw a 1500 pound projectile over 13 miles, driven by the force of 420 pounds of high explosive gun powder.  Each projectile was rammed into the breech of the gun and driven well up into the gun barrel by a hydraulic ram.  There was enough room left behind the round for four 105 pound silk bags of gun powder which were also gently pushed into the breech by the same ram, very carefully so as not to create a horrendous premature explosion in the gun room.  Those things did actually happen every now and then with great loss of life.

The best way to describe what happened when a battleship’s main guns were fired was to think of it as an explosion of hundreds of pounds of high explosive gun powder in a very strong enclosed steel pipe where the weakest part of the container was the projectile that blocked the long barrel of the gun.  The exploding gun powder blew the 1500 pound bullet out the pipe an sent it 13 miles away where it could penetrate a foot and a half of high tension steel or destroy a heavily reinforced structure.

Battleships NEW MEXICO, MISSISSIPPI & IDAHO

By the way, the nine 16” guns on the IOWA Class Battleships like the WISCONSIN used six 110 pound silk bags of gun powder to throw projectiles that weighed anywhere from 1900 to 2700 pounds as far as 24 miles.  That is over the horizon.  An IOWA class battleship could fire its main battery and 90 seconds later, a full minute and a half, tons of high explosive death could fall on ships or shoreside targets that never saw the source.


WE RETURN TO OUR REGULAR PROGRAM

Where was I?  Oh yes.  It was July 1943 and the Task Force had already shelled Kiska.  It was steaming around in the normal, incredibly thick fog that was what Summertime in the Aleutian Islands usually provided.  Radar had been invented, I think by the Brits, and was just getting out to the Fleet.  It didn’t work like it does today.  Many of you have had bridge tours when on a cruise or have sailed on ships with a radar based display that showed the ships nearby, islands and other geographic or man made objects within range.  The pictures are very good and there is even a sense of the density of the target so sailors can tell whether they are looking at a heavy shower or a sand bank.

In the early days the screen would show blips or pips, something that looked like a spike or one of the towers you see on your cell phone that tells you how strong the signal in the area is.  The blip would be there and then it would be gone.  A good radar operator was as much an artist as he was an engineer or technician.  Really sharp guys were able to guess the size or density of the signal.  Guess is the operative word here.

Cut back to the Task Force.

USS MISSISSIPPI BB 41

The ships were on a high state of alert.  Adrenaline was pumping since they had just finished a shorefire exercise.  The fog and limited visibility added to the nervousness any sailor would feel when sailing in close company through waters that had reports of many enemy ships and submarines.  

All of a sudden the radar operators reported numerous bogies.  Bogies are unknown surface contacts.  The big guns trained out to t to the far away targets and the order to Commence Fire was given to the ships that had the targets on their radars.  Round after round was sent on its way.  There was no return fire.

The one way battle continued until the Cease Fire order was given.  518 of the 14” shells were fired by the MISSISSIPPI  and IDAHO.  That is 777,000 pounds of steel and high explosives sent on its way by 217,560 pounds of gun powder.  That’s what we crude sailors used to call “A real load of whale shit”.

It seems like that huge amount of cetacean fecal matter was wasted.  Subsequent aerial reconnaissance flights that looked through breaks in the clouds and fog found no trace of ships or any other man made items.  They did, however, see some evidence of large flocks of sooty shearwaters, a kind of petrel.  Shearwaters tend to congregate in great numbers and, it has been assumed, the huge floating pods of sea birds looked like surface targets to the early vintage radars.  There is another school of thought that thinks that there were some aberrant bounces of the radar signals off the water and the clouds overhead that sent the signal hundreds of miles beyond the farthest radar range ever encountered.  Somehow the radar signal bounced off the water and went up until it hit the clouds and was sent back to the sea and back to the cloud and on and on until it hit a solid surface, like an island.  That’s great, but how did it get back? Quien sabe?

The Bird

It still makes a pretty good story of how early radar gave the US Navy the bird.

SOOTY SHEARWATERS

ALASKA TALES: ANCHORAGE THEN AND NOW

And You Thought Your Boarding Was Tough!

Some of you will be lucky enough to get to Alaska this year or maybe soon.  This magnificent state, called the Great Land by the earliest natives, can be overwhelming.  After all, if you dropped Alaska on the Lower 48, parts of it would go off the edges and it would cover ⅔ rds of the ground area of continental USA.  So, when someone says that there is a lot to see in Alaska, a polite “Duh” is not inappropriate.  In the rush to see Denali, Glaciers, Gold Rush towns and famous sea ports sometimes Anchorage is just a place tourists zoom through on the way to somewhere else.

That’s a shame because Anchorage is the throbbing heart of Alaska.

Recent Commercial View of Downtown

Believe it or not, 4th Street Anchorage 1959

Whether you take a Sea-Land tour or get on or off your ship in the Anchorage area, spend more than a moment to check out this frontier town that pulses with the energy of an adolescent just trying out the new growth and the muscle that goes with it.

Port of Anchorage 1960

AMSTERDAM in Juneau

Capt Cook & Cdr Daley looking over Cook Inlet from the deck at Resolution Park

Some of the Fruits & Veggies at Anchorage's Saturday Market

Twins Stop for a Snack on Anchorage Highway

Blanket Toss in Anchorage 1956

If you are really lucky you might arrive in Anchorage on MS AMSTERDAM, a Holland America ship that actually transits Cook Inlet and ties up in the Port of Anchorage, virtually in the middle of downtown.  Because of the great rise and fall of the tides normal at the end of a long inlet, in the past ships seldom ventured into the port of Anchorage.  Between the tides and the huge amount of silt that gets washed downstream from melting glaciers it was common for unwary mariners to find themselves sitting on a bank of soft, viscous black sandy dirt.  

To capitalize on the boom in ship borne tourism the State of Alaska invested in making the Port of Anchorage more accessible to relatively deep draft ocean going vessels.  I have been bouncing around the port of Anchorage since the first time we lived in Alaska, July 1959, the same year our 2nd child was born there.  Between subsequent business trips, employment interviews, speaking engagements on a variety of cruise ships and visits to our #1 son & family we have enjoyed Alaska and Anchorage ever since that long ago day we first walked across the pier in Whittier.  Rather than just talk or should I say write about it let me show you some pictures that trace the vibrant growth of Anchorage and the Port of Anchorage as we saw it for the past half century.

                          There's Gold In Them Thar Hills

From Mining Camp to Alaska's Capital; Why Juneau is Juneau

Harris & Juneau on a cigar box lid

Between posting the first part of this two parter about the naming of Juneau I thought I would re-read some of the State of Alaska material on our pals, Juneau and Harris.  Hey, maybe I was too hard on these guys.  What looks like the official state history of Gold Mining in Alaska has a great article that makes these gentlemen look like distinguished mining engineers who spent their spare time doing good works for their fellow man when they were not reading the classics.  I guess my version is the unsanitized one.  Official history likes to paint the big names of the past as heroes and not ne’er do wells.

Whatever the official version is, I say Harris and Juneau were just what you would expect in a rough and tough, booze and bimbos, spit in your eye town.

Alaskan Hard Rock Miners

Harris and Juneau went back to what was now called Gold Creek and continued to mine for gold.  Pilz paid his prospectors for most of the rights to the 160 acre mining camp they staked out at the mouth of Gold Creek.  Juneau and Harris hung around the camp and helped establish the first new town in Alaska since the US Congress paid Russia $7.2  million in 1867 for Alaska in the world’s best real estate deal.

Forming the town and managing it were very informal.  No one really cared what the mining camp was called and it had a series of names.  First people called it Harrisburg after Richard Harris.  Then George Pilz got his oar in the water and the camp became Pilzburg.  New on the scene was Lieutenant Commander Charles Rockwell who was either the Executive Officer or Commanding Officer of the USS Jamestown, a US Navy ship. Jamestown was sent to Alaska to show the US flag and act as a stabilizing force in the Wild West atmosphere of the New Frontier.  By the way, LCDR Rockwell must have been a fine fellow because he later became a Rear Admiral.

Rockwell’s position as the civil  authority was honored by changing the name of the town and for a while it was called Rockwell.  I guess Joe Juneau must have felt left out because in 1881 he told all of the miners that he was sponsoring a meeting at one of the town’s gin mills where everyone was going to settle on a name for the town for once and for all.  And by the way, the drinks were on him.

Panning for Gold around Juneau

There were maybe 75 miners and other citizens at the affair and, of course, since Joe Juneau was paying for the booze they didn’t exactly jump right in to the voting thing.  Elections are a thirsty business as any Chicago Alderman or New York City Councilman can attest.

Red Dog Saloon Juneau; our Boys would have loved it

After an appropriately lengthy time to consider the matter the electors decided that the town was to be called Juneau City instead of Harrisburg, which was proposed for a comeback.  The City part got dropped over time and what became first the Territorial Capital and later the State Capital was just plain Juneau, America’s biggest city.

Virtue triumphs once again.

Juneau circa 1895

ALASKA TALES: WHY JUNEAU WAS NAMED JUNEAU

Juneau, looking out Gastineau Channel

Quick.  What is the biggest city in the United States?  Nope to whatever you guessed; it is Juneau Alaska which is bigger than Rhode Island or Delaware.  In fact it is almost as large as both Delaware and Rhode Island.

Actually, you probably guessed correctly since this post is about Juneau but some folks cannot see even the most obvious clue.

What I really want to talk about is why Juneau was even settled and why it is named Juneau.  After all, this city was earlier named Harrisburg, Pilzburg and Rockwell before it was named Juneau.  Rockwell was an Navy Lieutenant Commander who came on the scene after the city was already a going concern.  The other fellows were part of the reason Juneau is where it is.

George Pilz (sometimes spelled Pelz)  was a hustler in Sitka, which in 1880 was a big deal in the new Alaska Territory.  Today polite people call Pilz an entrepreneur  but he was a tough customer who held court in Sitka’s bar & bordello precinct.  He had a standing offer to pay big bucks, $1000 if you can believe some stories, to any local Native Chief who could lead him or his employees to a big find of gold ore.

Joe Juneau, Chief Kowee, Richard Harris

Chief Kowee, an Auke Indian, showed up with some ore and Pilz sent a team out with Kowee to prove out the find.  The first guys didn’t strike gold, they struck out.  Chief Kowee was persistent and convinced Pilz that it was at least worth another try to find the source of the gold ore.  Pilz hired Joe Juneau and Richard Harris, a pair of Good Ol Boys from the local bar scene and outfitted them with tools and rations sufficient to grubstake them for a lengthy search.

Joe and Richard were not what you would call eager beavers and swapped their rations for some hooch, local booze made by the Tlingit Indians of the Hoochinoo tribe.  Hooch.  I am sure you have heard of that.  Hooch was also called Squirrel Whiskey both because it made you nutty and it also made you want to climb a tree.  Juneau and Harris camped out on the beach with their hooch and forgot about the hard work of prospecting.

Chief Kowee remained focused on the reward and ratted out Juneau and Harris to Pilz.  Pilz was not known for his sense of humor. He counseled his hung over miners that their health might suffer if they did not get back in their canoe with the Chief and find that gold.

Alaskan Gold Nuggets

The reluctant miners paddled up a creek to a place called Silver Bow Basin where they found some gold nuggets as big as peas and beans according to a reported comment by Harris. There was also lots of quartz rock with visible streaks of gold.  They hammered away at the rock until they filled their canoe with around 1000 pounds of gold bearing ore and took off.  For Canada, not Sitka.  The whole story about the city of Juneau might have ended there if some of Pilz’ men hadn’t run into the pair and took them and the ore back to Sitka.


More on the founding of Juneau and how it was named after Joe Juneau in my next post

MORE ON BOBBY BENSON & ALASKA'S FLAG

BIG DIPPER & THE NORTH STAR

On May 2, 1927, the Territorial Legislature unanimously passed an act to adopt Benson's design as the official flag. His prize was an engraved watch and $1,000 to pay for a trip to Washington, D.C., with the intent that Benson would present the flag to President Calvin Coolidge in person. When those travel plans did not work out, the Legislature set aside the money for Benson's further education.  As a young man he went to Seattle and used the money to study diesel engines.  That got him out of subsistence fishing and into a life’s work as a mechanic.

Alaska's new flag of blue and gold silk first flew over the Jesse Lee Home in Unalaska on July 9, which is now recognized annually as Alaska Flag Day. During the special ceremony, Benson received his gold watch, which had been engraved with the flag design. As an adult, Benson made his home in Kodiak, where he raised two daughters and became a grandfather. Occasionally he made and signed replicas of the flag that he designed. The last one he made, at age 58, is now on display at the Alaskan Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. Benny, always a modest and humble man, gave his watch to an Alaskan Museum as well.

Anchorage in 1972

Benson worked as a master carpenter and as an airplane mechanic for Kodiak Airways from 1950 until his death on July 2, 1972. Having achieved celebrity at such a young age, Benson nonetheless is remembered on Kodiak as an unassuming man.

 

Big News in the Newest State

In 1959 the United States Congress formally made Alaska the 49th State of the United States.  The beauty and deeply felt spirit of Benny's Alaskan Territory flag was recognized by the new state and Benny's flag became the official flag of the new state.

Benny and the Governor

Anchorage's Benson Boulevard is named for him, as well as an Anchorage High School.  It is more like a special education vocational technology school rather than an academic school. In Kodiak, Benny Benson Drive honors their longtime resident.  There is even a variety of Kodiak wild grass named Benson Beach Wild Rye.  Ironically, the High School named for this big-hearted orphan is a school is for troubled kids and has within it a middle school for truants, dropouts and other of society's “bad” kids.

Once Benny's Home Ground

If you are on a ship that calls in Seward take a few moments to visit the Bobby Benson monument.  It is not an overwhelming place.  In fact, when I first saw it I said to myself “So this is it. Maybe it ought to be a bit more grand.”  Then I realized that it was completely consistent with Bobby; kind of just there but solid and done in the non-ostentatious Alaskan mainstream way.




Seward warmly remembers the young boy whose love for Alaska is reflected in the beauty of the flag. The monument erected in Benny Benson's honor is at Mile 1.4 of the Seward Highway. The roadside park is near the entrance to the town, across from the small boat harbor. In 1964, following the massive destruction of the Good Friday Earthquake, the Jesse Lee Home for Orphans moved again, from Seward to Anchorage. In 1970, it merged with Lutheran Youth Services and the Anchorage Christian Children's Home to create Alaska Children's Services. Since 1991, ACS has hosted Alaska Flag Day activities. Festivities on Alaska Flag Day retell the story of how one young boy forever left his mark on his homeland, Alaska, The Great Land.

Benny's Love of Alaska Still Waves Everyday

ALASKA TALES---BOBBY BENSON & THE ALASKA STATE FLAG

The Alaska Flag

In 1926 Alaska was nearing its 60th year under the U.S. flag when Alaska Gov. George A. Parks on a trip to a Post Office in Washington saw that the Territory of Alaska had no flag.  He decided it was time the territory had its own official flag. Governor Parks thought that the Alaska Chapter of the American Legion would be a good place to go for advice on a flag.  The Legion leaders came up with a great idea; have a flag design contest among Alaska's schoolchildren in grades 7 through 12.

More than 700 flags were designed by school kids before the best 142 selected by schools and communities all over the huge, sparsely populated territory were sent to Juneau for the final judging. Many of those original flag designs are part of the American Legion Collection now held by the Alaska State Museum in Juneau. If your ship makes a Juneau port call the State Museum is a worthwhile stop.

The eventual winning design was drawn by a 13 year old boy who was a student at what was called a Territorial School at Seward, near the tip of the Kenai Peninsula.  I guess you could call the winner, a kid named Benny Benson, a true Alaskan because he was the son of a father from Sweden and a mother with Aleut and Russian ancestry.  They were also dirt poor which was no surprise in those days. 

Alaskan Family at around Benny's Time

Benny had a hard life right from the beginning.  His mother died when he was three and his father could not cope with bringing up Benny and his siblings on his own.  The family home at Chignik, also on the Kenai, was broken up and Benny and his brother Carl were sent out to the Aleutian Island of Unalaska to an orphanage. Don’t forget;  Benny was three years old and his first Alaskan cruise was a bit less deluxe than what we experience today.  It was on an old steam/sail schooner that took about a week for the 800 mile trip.  That would be maybe two days on a modern ship.

The Unalaska orphanage closed and Benny and got shipped back to the Kenai to the Seward Territorial School, another orphanage.  He was now 5. 

Benny Benson submitted several designs for the contest, including one with Mount McKinley as the central feature; another included a dog team and the year 1867, when the U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia. For his winning design, however, Benson used blue paint and construction paper, placing the Big Dipper and North Star (the Ursa Major constellation) against a blue background. He cut the colored flag out and glued it to his entry.  On the same page he wrote what the flag meant to him.   His handwritten notes on the art say: "The blue field is for the Alaska sky and the foret-me-not [sic], an Alaskan flower. The North Star is for the future state of Alaska, the most northerly in the union. The Dipper is for the Great Bear, symbolising strenth [sic]."

Benny's Entry with later picture

How is that for what today we would call the work of a throwaway kid?

More on Benny and the Alaskan Flag in the next posting.

Benny and his Hand Made Flag