Pirate risk for Costa Cruises liner
A crippled cruise ship
owned by the company whose giant liner was wrecked off Italy last month is
being towed by a French tuna boat to the main island in the Seychelles, its
owners say.An engine room fire on the Costa Allegra knocked out the ship's main
power supply in the Indian Ocean on Monday, leaving it adrift with more than a
thousand people on board in waters vulnerable to pirates.It is being protected
by nine members of an anti-piracy unit of the Italian navy, a precaution
regularly taken on ships in the Indian Ocean which is prone to attacks by
Somali pirates."The ship is not in a high-risk area, but we can't be 100%
sure," said Costa Cruises' Giorgio Moretti.While yachts have been seized
in the past near Seychelles, pirates have yet to successfully hijack a cruise liner
in the Indian Ocean.The ship's Italian owner, Costa Cruises, a unit of US
cruise line giant Carnival Corp, said a plan to tow it to the nearer island of
Desroches had been aborted because it would have been harder to moor and
disembark the passengers there.The Trevignon, a deep sea trawler which sails
the oceans for tuna from the Atlantic port of Concarneau, is pulling the Costa
Allegra, a vessel many times its size, on a 400-metre cable at a speed of only
about six knots, the Trevignon's skipper Alain Dervout told his local French
newspaper, Ouest-France.He was joined today by two tugs and a coastguard ship,
all from Seychelles, the archipelago's government said. A military aircraft was
also flying in support of the operation.The cruise ship was due to arrive at
the Seychelles capital of Victoria on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning
local time, depending on weather conditions, government spokeswoman Srdjana
Janosevic said. Clocks in the Seychelles are four hours ahead of GMT."Helicopters
will ensure continuous supply of food, comfort items, flashlights in order to
mitigate guests' discomfort given the difficult conditions on board,"
Costa Cruises spokesman Davide Barbano said in a statement.A team from the
Italian coastguard is heading to the Seychelles to investigate the accident,
but a spokesman for the agency it would be wrong to make analogies to the Costa
Concordia disaster on January 13, in which at least 25 people died and over
which a criminal investigation has been launched."They are two different
situations, totally different conditions, so they are not related accidents,"
Cosimo Nicastro.Prosecutors in the Italian city of Genoa have
opened an investigation into the fire on the Costa Allegra, judicial sources
said.Nicastro said there was no question of the passengers being transferred to
other vessels."The safest place for the people is on the ship. There is no
reason to put them on another ship or a helicopter. They will remain on the
Costa Allegra and we will keep monitoring the situation," he said.An
evacuation off Desroches Island would have presented the ship owner and local
authorities with a tricky and expensive logistical operation.The 636 passengers
and 413 crew would have had to use the ship's lifeboats to land on the
exclusive coral-fringed island, where Britain's Prince William and his then
girlfriend, now wife, Kate Middleton, stayed a few years ago."Logistics
and hotels on the island are not sufficient. It would require ... an immediate
transfer from Desroches to Mahe," Barbano, the Costa Cruises spokesman,
said.
