138 days in pirate hands. Sward sails on under escort while four hijacked ships remain off Somalia

The Spanish frigate Numancia, deployed with the European Union's Operation Atalanta, is escorting the general cargo ship Sward to her next port. The vessel, hijacked on 26 April off the coast of Somalia and used by pirates for 138 days as a base for further attacks, was released in mid-September after a ransom was paid. The Spanish defence staff describes the escort as a routine task of a mission whose purpose is to prevent piracy in the Indian Ocean. Routine is a misleading word: 2026 has brought the most Somali pirate attacks since 2013.

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02 october 2026   |   22:04   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Sztab Generalny Obrony Hiszpanii

From Suez to Mombasa, with a stop in Puntland

Sward, flagged in Saint Kitts and Nevis and managed by a company with Turkish links, left Suez with a cargo of fertiliser for Mombasa in Kenya. On 26 April armed men boarded her off Somalia. The crew numbered seventeen: fifteen Syrians and two Indians. All became hostages.

The pirates did not keep the ship in one place. They turned her into what was standard practice at the height of Somali piracy more than a decade ago: a mothership. From Sward's deck, larger, faster and less conspicuous than the skiffs they usually attack from, they seized at least two Iranian fishing boats and the Cameroon-flagged cargo ship Lutuf. For Lutuf, according to security sources in Puntland, a ransom of 2.5 million dollars was paid, and 40,000 dollars for the fishing boats. Somalia's federal government tells it differently: Lutuf, it says, was freed under military pressure from the Turkish navy and Somali forces, during which four pirate boats were destroyed and fourteen pirates killed. Both accounts can be true at once, because pressure and ransom often work together.

Release near Garacad

Sward was released near Garacad, a port in Puntland, the semi-autonomous region on Somalia's north-eastern coast. Security sources say a ransom was paid but do not say how much. The crew stayed aboard; the pirates went ashore, where vehicles were waiting for them, which the same sources read as proof that they had stayed in contact with a network on land throughout. That is a significant detail: Somali piracy was never a matter of a dozen men in a boat, but a business with investors, negotiators, supplies and transport.

After the release begins the stage that rarely makes the news. A ship that has spent almost five months under pirate control is in unknown technical condition, with a crew exhausted physically and mentally, and still in waters where other groups operate. That is why Atalanta escorts her to safety. The frigate Numancia, of the Santa María class, is one of the ships Spain has rotated through the mission for years; Spain, alongside Italy, is its principal contributor, and the operation's headquarters is at Rota.

Fifteen attacks in a year, four ships still held

The International Maritime Organization has recorded at least fifteen attacks off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden in 2026, the most since 2013, when international patrols, armed guards on ships and action ashore suppressed a phenomenon that at its peak in 2011 meant dozens of hijacked ships and hundreds of hostages. The rise began in the spring and has touched vessels of various types, including tankers carrying fertiliser.

Four merchant ships remain in pirate hands: the tankers Honour 25, Eureka, Asana and Seamull. Their crews are waiting for negotiations that, in Sward's case, took four and a half months. In the background is a dispute over method: Puntland speaks of ransoms, Mogadishu of military operations, and every ransom paid finances the next hijacking.

The return of piracy is no accident. It coincides with the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, where the attention and the warships of the world's navies are focused on the Persian Gulf and on the Houthis. With fewer patrols off Somalia, and with traffic avoiding the Red Sea shifting to longer routes around Africa, the groups from Puntland are returning to a trade they know from the previous decade.

What it means for Polish shipping

Poland sends no ships to Atalanta today and the Polish Navy has no vessels in the region. Polish seafarers are there constantly, however, on ships of owners from all over the world, because the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Africa lie on the route from Europe to Asia and East Africa. For Polish shipowners the question is whether their ships now pass through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea or round the Cape of Good Hope, and what insurance and onboard security cost today on a route where two years ago nobody priced the risk of piracy.

For Polish Steamship Company and other bulk operators it means that every voyage to Mombasa, Dar es Salaam or the Persian Gulf now requires a decision that in 2015 was taken once every few years. Sward was carrying fertiliser to Mombasa. Polish ships carry grain there.

Numancia will bring Sward into port, and her crew will go home after five months about which nobody but they know everything. Four other crews are waiting.

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piraci Somalia operacja Atalanta Numancia piractwo 2026 Zatoka Adeńska

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