Events
- April - The Cypriot-registered fuel tanker Valiant Carrier is hijacked in the Malacca Strait when pirates stormed the ship after throwing Molotov cocktails onto the deck. During the attack three of ship's officers are stabbed, as well a seven-month-old girl, before leaving the ship adrift. The crew is able to regain control of the ship, avoiding collision with a nearby island and preventing a massive oil spill.
- April 28 - Holding a ships officer hostage, a ship is robbed of $9,926 and the master's gold bangle after being boarded in Bangka Strait, Indonesia.
- June 8 - A ship bound for Songkhla, Thailand is boarded by pirates in two speedboats off the east coast of Malaysia and hijacked. While holding one crew member hostage, the remaining sixteen crewmen were forced into a lifeboat and set adrift, sailing away with 2,060 tons of gas oil before Chinese authorities eventually detained the ship.
- October 22 - The Japanese cargo ship Alondra Rainbow is attacked and boarded by ten pirates, eventually setting 17 crew members adrift on one of the ship's life rafts. Without food or water, the sailors drift on the open sea for more than a week before being rescued. The ship, which had since changed its name and was sailing under the flag of Belize, is later sighted by the Indian navy which captures the ship after a two-day chase. It is later discovered, partly from the confessions of the captured pirates while in custody, that they had been planning to exchange the ship's cargo of aluminum ingots for weapons to arm separatist guerillas fighting in Sri Lanka.
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Read more about this topic: 1999 In Piracy
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant. They are two orders of fact which reflect each other, which are always linked and which sometimes provoke each other.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“There are no little events in life, those we think of no consequence may be full of fate, and it is at our own risk if we neglect the acquaintances and opportunities that seem to be casually offered, and of small importance.”
—Amelia E. Barr (1831–1919)