For those of you who have taken cruises on the Oceania line, I thought the following would be of interest. I saw it while looking at the Oceania boards on cruisecritic.com

editor@cruisecritic
Editor Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: New Jersey
Posts: 1,164

Nautica -- pirate attack today

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Hi, we just got a statement from Oceania Cruises about an attempted attack by pirates on Oceania Nautica as the ship was passing through the Gulf of Aden. Here's a link: http://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/news/news.cfm?ID=2961

Fortunately, all are safe and the ship outran the pirates. Ships that travel through this area are equipped with special equipment for just this type of threat (it's basically a very high pitched stereo with massive speakers). You may recall that Seabourn used a similar type of technology a few years back.

I've cruised through that area (on a German ship and accompanied by German war ships) and it's quite dangerous but is the only reasonable way to get a ship transitioned from Europe to Asia (via the Suez Canal). Going the other way -- around the horn of Africa -- takes a very long time and there's no where really to stop, ports on the west coast aren't really equipped for cruise travelers.

We'll hear more as the days go by but the captain and crew of Nautica -- HEROES.


Carolyn

Carolyn Spencer Brown
Editor in chief
Cruise Critic

Glad to hear no one was harmed. We were on the Nautica two years ago and loved it!

I'm glad everyone is allright. Though I hate to say it if these pirates would get blown out of the water once or twice it may just make the rest of them think twice.

They tried that and blew up a fishing trawler instead.

Specifics?

There is more on CNN, travel, go to details. It was off Yemen, and the ship moved faster then the pirates, thankfully!

Here is the link, thanks to being on hold with RC

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa...hip/index.html

I just saw that on CNN and was about to post the link. We've been on many cruises with Oceania and can't imagine being in a situation like that. Thank goodness everyone is safe.

This was on CBS News this morning.

http://www.cbsnews.com:80/video/watc...rColumnContent