Pirates attempted to capture the M/S Port Gdynia container ship on Monday morning, but were thwarted by the ship’s Polish sailors in the Gulf of Guinea near Africa. The head of the Polish Ocean Lines (PLO), Dorota Arciszewska-Mielewczyk, stated that the pirate attack took place as the ship was sailing to the port of Bata in Equatorial Guinea. The vessel was traveling under a Maltan flag and its crew was comprised of 20 Polish sailors. “Fortunately, nothing bad happened to anyone. The sailors behaved very bravely. Due to the investigation, we cannot currently reveal details of the encounter,” the head of PLO explained.
Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Marek Gróbarczyk said that a crisis management team with the participation of Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczynski had been consulted on the matter. Dorota Arciszewska-Mielewczyk, PLO’s CEO: Fortunately nothing bad happened to anyone. The sailors behaved very bravely. “The crew successfully repelled the hijacking of the vessel. After the attack, they hid in the so-called citadel which prevented steering the container ship. The most important thing to us is that no one was harmed. The pirates most likely fired on the ship’s bridge in fury and destroyed parts of the vessel’s equipment,” he said. Gróbarczyk added that after the pirates realized that they were not able to take control over the ship, they abandoned it. This is the second such attack in the area of the Gulf of Guinea recently, writes Bloomberg. On Saturday, pirates boarded the Maersk Cadiz ship which was sailing under a Singapore flag and was traveling from Ghana to Cameroon. No one among the 21 crew members was harmed.
Title image: The container ship M/S Port Gdynia in the Gulf of Guinea, source: vesselfinder.com
