Maritime Blogger Recaptures ship taken by pirates

Image Credit: USNI Blog

Remember when the team of U.S. Marines stormed the tanker full of pirates and took back the ship?  You should, because as we reported earlier, at 5 a.m. local time, a team of 24 U.S. Marines operating under Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151), the task force set up to combat piracy off of Somalia’s lawless coast, boarded and seized control of  the German–owned M/V Magellan Star which was hijacked a day earlier by a group of pirates.  Interestingly enough, U.S. Naval Institute blogger Captain Alex Martin, USMC and his unit, were the ones that took back the vessel.  He writes in:

“We got word that the pirates wanted to stay on and fight — it was funny b/c when we came alongside and they saw us board and rush the superstructure, you could see the look change in their eyes…they didn’t want to play anymore…”

In fact, Captain Martin and the rest of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit’s Maritime Raid Force (MRF), aboard USS Dubuque (LPD 8), have been in training to do just that; hunt pirates.  In a prelude article published in the July’s Proceedings issue, Pirates Beware: Force Recon Has Your Number, he tells us:

…we have been training to kill pirates for an entire year, which is also not as sexy as it sounds. It’s plain hard.

Looks like the training is working well!  It’s being reported that no shots were fired and no injuries reported during the raid.  Be sure to check out the full article at USNI blog HERE.

[Pictured above: Force Recon Platoon 15th MEU – August 2010 – USNI Blog]

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