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MIDDLE EAST GULF OF ADEN PIRATES Big Ships!: Fighting Pirates Aboard The HDMS Absalon PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-pVUL3pJvc
Fighting Pirates Aboard The HDMS Absalon Big Ships! Nov 13, 2025 32.8K subscribers ... 90,341 views ... 774 likes The HDMS Absalon is a state of the art Danish ship that protects the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Meet the crew who put their lives on the line fighting pirates around the world. Welcome aboard Big Ships! We are your port of call for a captivating voyage through the giants of naval history. From the legendary ships of antiquity to colossal cargo carriers, we promise an ocean of content to quench your thirst. Anchors aweigh! You can now become a History Hit member right here on YouTube! Join for access to a new exclusive documentary every week, and access to over 160+ of our documentaries presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Eleanor Janega, Tristan Hughes, Mary Beard, Matt Lewis and more. Get an exclusive release every week by signing up here: https://bit.ly/4pyExyn For any enquiries please email owned-enquiries@littledotstudios.com Big Ships! is part of the History Hit Network. How this was made Auto-dubbed Audio tracks for some languages were automatically generated. Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess Transcript 0:02 She is the pride of the Royal Danish Navy. HDMS Absilon, one of the most modern warships on the high seas. Her mission is a dangerous one, hunting pirates in the busiest shipping route on Earth. They shoot against the bridge using AK-47 or rocket propelled grenades. Pirate attacks are on the rise. They're fearless, reckless, and ruthless. They have killed sailors on board the ships. HDMS Absilon is leading the multinational fight against pirates to make the seas safe again. [Music] It's the day after Christmas and the Danish Navy's HDMS Absilon is in Muscat, Oman. She's resupplied and heading out on her 1:05 next 14-day patrol in the Gulf of Aiden. Absilon was launched in 2008. Her first 1:12 deployment was as a member of an international task force. Now she's leading it, searching for terrorists who 1:19 try to sneak into the Middle East from Africa across the Gulf of Aiden. 1:26 A lot of things have happened in the world for the last 10 years. Uh and I think all this started uh by the 1:32 terrorist acts that we saw 9/11. But times have changed and so has the 1:39 mission. Today they're hunting pirates practicing their own brand of terror. 1:44 Armed with AK-47s and rocket propelled grenades, they're attacking ships and capturing crews for ransom. It's a 1:52 dangerous business. They have killed sailors on board the ships. So, it's very dangerous uh for 1:59 the merchant ship. Abselon's job is to stop them, and she's 2:06 got the goods to do it. She's called a flexible support ship and comes well 2:12 equipped with deadly weapons. Sophisticated radar and sonar. 2:20 A flight deck for a Lynx attack helicopter. One of the fastest on Earth 2:31 and a one-of-a-kind flex deck running from the stern to midship. Well, the flex deck of the Absilon class 2:37 is the multi-purpose deck. We have a roll on rolloff capacity on the stern. and the flex deck opens up 2:44 allowing tanks, a company of soldiers or a mobile hospital to roll on board. 2:50 Right now, the Flex Deck is headquarters of combined task force 150 that commands a fleet of a dozen warships. 2:58 CTF-150 is a coalition of countries guarding the Horn of Africa. 3:04 We call it the coalition of the willing and there's right now there's 22 uh 3:09 nations that have signed up for this coalition. 3:17 As they patrol the Gulf of Aiden, they work as the central command post, coordinating rescue efforts on the part 3:23 of the coalition. 10% of the world's trade moves through this narrow waterway. 20,000 ships a 3:32 year. There's no shortage of targets. Most pirates come from the lawless state 3:38 of Somalia. With its economy in chaos, many have turned to piracy. 3:43 And they recruited a lot of young men, young boys from Somalia. And they they 3:50 found out that by hijacking a ship, they could get access to quite a lot of money. 3:56 Ransoms of over $80 million in cash were paid in 2008. 4:02 Successful pirates are treated like rock stars at home. But these rock stars use 4:08 instruments of war. Normally they shoot against the bridge or the super structure 4:14 using uh AK-47 uh machine guns or uh rocket propelled 4:19 grenades. As the crew ducks for cover, the pirates use ladders to climb on board and 4:26 capture the ship. The pirates are bold. They have attacked 4:31 cruise ships, tankers, luxury yachts, even a freighter carrying tanks and 4:36 missiles. They move quickly and are tough to 4:43 identify, disguising themselves as fishermen in small boats. CTF-150 has divided the Gulf of Aiden, 4:51 known as Pirate Alley, into patrol boxes. Inside each one is a warship. 4:59 The location of Abselon's patrol box is classified, but her job isn't. The Navy 5:06 searches every suspicious boat, seizes weapons, captures pirates, and if 5:11 necessary, intervenes with force. See the station is and if the pirates shoot back 5:23 [Music] Absilon's captain Dan Rasmusen is ready 5:28 for action. He's a 26-year veteran who enlisted as a naval seaman. He's worked 5:35 his way up the military ladder and is now in command. He has earned and won 5:40 the respect of his crew. I think my background actually helps a lot because 5:45 they know that I came from where they actually were. 5:53 Cruising at 15 knots, Abselon will reach her patrol box in just 2 days. 6:01 The crew uses the time to stay combat ready. 6:10 Denmark is a maritime nation, and joining the Navy is a time-honored tradition for Absilon's 100man crew. 6:19 This mission in the Gulf is a sensitive one. Their last names are not used to 6:24 protect their identities. On the bridge, 23-year-old Latutenant 6:31 Anders is a career officer and right now officer of the watch. His job is to keep 6:37 an eye on the horizon for the next 5 hours. Abselon is still hundreds of kilometers 6:44 from her patrol box, but Anders has spotted a suspicious boat. Uh normally 6:49 uh we go into one nautical miles at first investigating and then if uh commander wants us to we go closer uh 6:57 0.3 nautical miles and then uh if there's any suspicious things we maybe 7:04 set our boarding chains. It looks like a fishing boat, 7:09 but Abselon's crew knows from experience that nothing in the Gulf of Aiden is what it seems. 7:16 Okay. Captain Rasmusen orders a boarding team 7:21 to stand by. The team is always made up of two units. 7:28 A special operations force whose skills are classified and so are their 7:33 identities. And a boarding party made up of members of the regular crew. 7:40 Both units prepare to launch their boats. The captain considers the threat 7:46 and then gives the order to go. Okay. 8:02 The special operations unit approaches the boat first. They look for evidence of pirates, guns, grappling hooks, or 8:09 ladders. When they confirm that there is no evidence on board, they pull back and 8:15 the boarding team gets the all clear to approach. 8:22 Their job is to get more information about these sailors. They could still be 8:28 pirates. They could have thrown their weapons and ladders overboard before Abselon arrived. 8:40 They claim to be fishermen from Yemen, not pirates from Somalia. They left Yemen yesterday, go out here 8:48 and fish, but uh they followed some tuna fish, but they came too far out to see. 8:54 Now, the team questions the fisherman to gather intelligence about activity in the Gulf. They're happy to give it. The 9:01 interpreter is blonde and blue-eyed, and she's fluent in Arabic. 9:14 She actually works like some sort of icebreaker, you know. Uh and and I think that uh that's actually in some sort of 9:21 way. She have opened some doors and perhaps have gotten more information than yeah a 9:28 normal normal guy would. They say they're fishermen, but the team 9:33 keep their fingers close to their triggers just in case. 9:49 Now they just have enough fuel to uh to go back to Yemen. So what we're going to do now is continue our questioning of uh 9:55 of the the guys here. Then we're going to tell them to uh to go straight home back to Yemen. 10:02 As a goodwill gesture, the Danes give the fisherman a care package. fresh water and a first aid kit and and some 10:09 some weight gloves. Yeah. 10:14 The boarding team heads back to Absilon to report their findings to the captain. 10:21 The fishermen have told them that there are pirates and they're close by. 10:35 HDMS Absilon is heading west, deeper into the Gulf of Aiden. 10:43 She's still a day away from reaching her patrol box, but the crew is on full alert. 10:50 Patrolling in a hot zone, Absilon needs to keep her fuel tanks at least 50% 10:55 full. She needs to be ready for anything at any time, so she's constantly topping up 11:03 at sea. compliments of floating gas stations. This time it's the Japanese Maritime 11:09 Defense Force Oiler Towada. A logistics officer, Lieutenant Commander Louise, coordinates the 11:16 replenishment. Abselon and Tawatada maneuver to within 11:24 18 m of each other, measured by a lead line. A second lead line is fired across. 11:37 Then Absilon hauls across a huge fuel hose with a probe attached 11:44 and the probe will go into this and then we are connected uh directly to our tanks and we can uh receive the fuel 11:52 from the Japanese ship. The two ships make it look routine but 11:57 it's a dangerous dance. They're refueling while traveling 30 kilometers 12:02 an hour. The pressure we can receive will be uh 12 cubic meter per minute. When it's 12:10 done, Absilon slaps a sticker on the hose as a momento. 12:22 With her tanks full, Absilon's two diesel engines can crank back up to her 12:27 cruising speed of 15 knots. [Music] Engineer Christian is better known as a 12:34 stoker, a title left over from the days when they shoveled coal to fuel their engines. Today, he monitors Abselon's 12:42 high-tech diesel engines constantly. Each diesel engine's 20 cylinders are 12:48 independent of one another. If one breaks down, they don't all have to be shut down, and the problem can be fixed 12:55 on the fly. Stop down the engine, pull one cylinder out with all the coolant pipes and 13:03 everything. Just unplug it and pull one power pack out and they're good to go in 13:09 about 6 hours. They're the biggest fast running diesel 13:14 engines ever built and can turn the 6,300 ton warship's propeller shafts 13:19 at,50 revolutions a minute. At full speed, Abselon can hit 25 knots 13:26 or 47 km an hour. On the open ocean, she's a giant Ferrari and can respond to 13:34 any action quickly, from a rescue mission to an Elqaeda terrorist attack. 13:41 But right now, it's a race to catch pirates. 13:47 And that race is coordinated right here on Absilon in the CTF-150 task force 13:53 operations room. The action of every ship in the task force is coordinated in 13:59 here. CTF-150 and its commander, Danish Commodore Pier Beum Christensen, have a 14:05 tough job. We are fighting all kinds of illegal activity and that is weapon smuggling, 14:12 that is piracy, that is human trafficking, uh drug smuggling. 14:19 CTF-150 patrols over 6 million square kilometers of ocean in the Middle East. 14:26 Its job is to keep the seas safe. 14:36 When a threat is assessed in the operations room, a ship or helicopter is dispatched within minutes. 14:44 Of all the ships in CTF-150, HDMS Absilon is the newest. Her design 14:50 and communications technology are ideal for modern warfare. The ship is uh is uh 14:55 built um as most modern warships are built these days, meaning uh stealth technology uh to to some degree. 15:04 Abselon's smooth, sleek, low profile makes her hard to see on radar. There 15:09 isn't a single right angle on her hull. So when radar hits her, the echo 15:16 scatters, sending back distorted images of the ship to the sender. 15:24 But stealth can't guarantee that she won't take a hit. So, this warship has another design feature to help her keep 15:30 fighting if she's damaged. Abselon is divided into 16 watertight 15:37 compartments that can be sealed off from one another. 15:43 You cannot go through the ship uh when you are below the water line through one section. There's no connection. And then 15:49 you have to go up and go down again. If the hull is breached, as long as the 15:55 flooded section is sealed off, the rest of the ship can stay watertight and continue to operate. 16:06 But this feature won't help them when it comes to fire. Like all warships, 16:12 Absilon is a floating keg of dynamite. So that's why ammunition storage room is 16:18 heavily protected by an extra thick insulation. That means a fire can be burning in close to the ammunition room 16:26 and the temperature it can be burned for 2 hours and the temperature will still not increase 60° inside the the room 16:34 where the ammunition is cold. But it's still vulnerable. The added insulation only buys the crew more time 16:41 to fight back the flames. And that's why regular fire drills require every sailor 16:47 on board to practice fighting every kind of fire imaginable. 16:53 HQ1 Abselon's technical division coordinates firefighting and damage control. 17:00 Their computers can monitor every fire or explosion on board, allowing them to 17:05 dispatch emergency teams quickly to deal with any threat. 17:10 Every day on patrol in the hot zone means Abselon is in a constant state of vigilance. 17:19 As part of her routine, they dispatch their Lynx helicopter daily on a reconnaissance mission. 17:28 Before every flight, the pilots are briefed on activity in the Gulf. 17:34 Search in UK ML. We'll use a standard call signs. 17:40 At the weather, we have a easily wind 10 knots, visibility of 10 mi plus, clear 17:45 weather, few clouds, temperature 24. They conduct visual searches looking for 17:53 suspicious activity beyond the ship's radar detection. 18:02 And on this flight, it's not long before they spot something. a fishing boat too 18:07 close to a merchant ship. If you take a look at that merchant ship, he's a perfect target. He's slow 18:14 moving and he's got a low three board. And what you can see is that he's spraying water over the side. That's 18:20 that's their only defense. That and eric steering. A suspicious boat closing in on a 18:26 merchant ship. A heavily armed attack helicopter hovering above. It's a 18:31 perfect recipe for high seas drama. 18:39 On a routine aerial reconnaissance in the Gulf of Aiden, HDMS Absilon's 18:44 helicopter has spotted a suspicious boat. It could be pirates. 18:51 [Music] They move in closer, looking for evidence. Ladders, guns, rocket 18:57 launchers. MS Alexa. 19:03 But the boat looks clean. The lynx reports back more fishermen from Yemen. 19:19 Yeah, he 19:25 the Lynx returns to base on the ship, but mere minutes later, an urgent call 19:31 comes in. A sailor on a merchant ship may be having a heart attack. 19:37 The helicopter crew prepares immediately for a medevac. We got a message from UK MTO about a 19:44 heart disease patient uh apparently stable. It seems like the ship is some 19:50 300 nautical miles away from us. Okay. 300 nautical miles. Um, okay. We 19:56 need to get the dock the dock inside here and uh and call the commodor. Yeah, I will uh call the doc 20:03 immediately. Yeah, we need the dock in the CGT room and we can leave. 20:09 Yep. 20:14 The ship's doctor and a nurse scramble into action, and Abselon accelerates to 20:20 her top speed of 25 knots. She has to close the distance between the two ships 20:25 as quickly as possible. 300 nautical miles is too far away for her helicopter 20:31 to safely fly a round trip. So, Absilon was sailing directly to uh to a position in the middle. and the 20:37 container ship also sailing directly and when we inside range the helicopter will be launched bring the patient back to 20:43 Abselon on the flight deck the air crew have 20:49 converted the links from a gunship into an ambulance the machine gun has been removed to make 20:55 room for a patient a stretcher and just in case a bodyguard 21:00 and uh one of the soft team members just to be sure that there are no pirates on board and if there are is he'll be able 21:08 to protect the uh medical officer we have 21:14 on the Hilo deck. The bodyguard, nurse, and doctor suit up and prepare for a long flight and the emergency. 21:24 We hadn't any news. We hadn't heard any news, but it should be stable and okay. 21:30 I think fly in about uh quarter of an hour. Yeah. 21:37 Finally, Absilon has closed the gap between the ships and the Lynx gets ready to take off. 21:45 Yeah, we fly as fast as possible about 130 knots. 21:51 The team buckles in and the Lynx lifts off. At top speed, they'll reach the 21:56 merchant ship now only 100 nautical miles away in an hour. So right now we 22:02 are we actually only know that the ship is heading this way and our helicopter 22:08 is as fast as it can heading in that direction. 22:17 The medevac mission is another prime example of Absilon's combat flexibility. 22:22 She has to be ready for anything. But first and foremost, Absilon is a 22:29 warship and equipped to fight more than pirates, a lot more. She has some of the 22:35 world's most advanced weapons and is a deadly adversary. Her Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft and 22:42 Harpoon anti-surface missiles can eliminate threats long before they ever see Absilon. 22:49 Basically, the the whole idea is uh being able to engage the enemy at a at a 22:55 at a great distance. A bow-mounted 5in gun 23:04 and twin 35 mm Millennium Guns destroy targets that get too close. 23:12 For even closer encounters, the crew trains constantly on their four 50 23:17 caliber machine guns. 23:26 And if surgical precision is required, a specially trained operations force from the Danish Navy's Frogman Corps is 23:33 called on. They're experts in diving, mine clearing, boarding, and 23:38 counterterrorism. 23:45 The odds of an all-out war in the Gulf of Aiden are slim, but everyone and 23:50 everything on board Apsilon has to be ready for any mission just in case. 24:00 And as a part of combined task force 150, that includes medical emergencies. 24:07 Right now, the officer of the watch is tracking Abselon's links, now heading back from the merchant ship with their 24:14 heart patient. That is understood. Thank you very much for your cooperation and I will be standing by on channel 16. 24:22 Plan is for the Hilo to bring in the uh the person uh that's uh ill. That's the 24:27 plan, I think. Um but uh it's pretty much just to stabilize him if possible. 24:41 The links land safely and with no time to waste. Just like a big city ER, the 24:48 patient is rushed to sick bay. 24:55 The patient is stabilized and fully assessed. It looks like it may be a false alarm, 25:01 but just to be sure, the doctor wants to fly the sailor to Oman for more tests. Maybe it could be uh the muscles between 25:09 his ribs that are sore. It can often give the same symptoms as a heart 25:14 attack, but uh that will time show. But his values are stable and the trip was 25:20 okay. [Music] 25:26 HDMS Absilon never rests, but tonight the crew has put aside their weapons to 25:32 enjoy another kind of fireworks. [Applause] 25:38 It's New Year's Eve and they're ringing it in on the signal deck 25:43 with traditional songs and a glass of champagne for each crew member. A rare treat. 25:49 Well, uh actually I think uh this moment right now uh says a whole lot about what 25:54 we're doing down here. We are in the operating area. We are going at it with patrol and so on, but still we can have 26:01 10 minutes of uh of good enjoyment on the signal deck. 26:07 Even in the middle of Pirate Alley, there's time for a party. All 10 minutes 26:12 of it. A lot of the crews are very young. So I 26:18 think they have a lot of feelings about being away from from home. So it's more 26:23 making it a nice evening more than some melancholic thing. 26:28 Being in a state of battle readiness and on constant alert forges strong bonds between the men and women on Absilon. 26:36 We uh we we are so close together are here and we see each other every day. 26:41 you can't get away from from from the people out here. So, just need to get along and just make the best of it. So, 26:49 it's like one big family. 26:59 Below deck in the galley, the chef and his team are preparing a special meal. We get a lot lot of gratitude from our 27:07 people on board. They love our food and we're happy to serve them. 27:13 Good food goes a long way to keeping a crew happy. Absilon can feed her 150 27:18 sailors fresh food for 28 days. I ordered approximately 27:25 6.5 tons of flour for a baker. 8 tons of 27:30 meat of various kinds. Each day we use approximately 50 to 60 kilos of meat. 27:37 Tonight, the chef is cooking a traditional dish. They love their their pork and bacon and 27:44 a good steak. That's that's the best for them. 27:53 It may be a new year and a new day in the Gulf of Aiden, 27:59 but nothing has changed. In the CTF operations room, another 28:05 distress call is being monitored from a freighter. This one just 10 kilometers away. 28:12 A suspicious boat is circling it. And the freighter suspects its pirates. 28:18 Abselon is close enough to use ESM, its electronic support measures, to try and 28:24 identify the threat. ESM scans a boat for any unique electronic emissions like 28:29 radar, sonar, homing beacons or GPS. Each one is just like a fingerprint. 28:35 It emits some kind of a pulse from the radar. We can pick it up and we can put that into our library and we can say 28:41 we've had that before. But ESM isn't detecting any signals at 28:48 all coming from this boat. And running silent is typical pirate behavior. 28:56 Captain Rasmusen orders Absilon to speed up with Nightfalling. He does not want the 29:04 pirates to escape. 29:15 In the Gulf of Aiden, a commercial ship may be under attack by pirates. HDMS 29:21 epsilon is responding to the SOS and she's close just 10 kilometers away. 29:28 To track the pirates, the crew are now using the oldest sensor in their naval arsenal, their eyes. 29:35 In in this specific context, the piracy hunts, it it is actually the eyeball mark one that that that's a primary 29:43 sensor. On the bridge, they've spotted the target, a container ship. And near it, 29:51 several small wooden boats. Pirates may be poor, but they're not 29:57 stupid. They've learned how to capture big ships by surrounding them in small, fast boats and opening fire, forcing 30:04 them to stop. Absilon is doing what she does best, 30:09 speeding to the rescue. Her deck gunners are on high alert. 30:17 They've caught the pirates right at the scene of the crime. Surprised and outgunned, the pirates know they won't 30:23 survive a shootout. When Absilon Somali interpreter orders them to put up their hands, 30:30 [Music] the pirates know it's game over. 30:43 By sundown, the special operation force and boarding party are dispatched to get a closer look at the threat. The pirates 30:50 are armed and they're ordered to throw their weapons overboard one by one. 30:56 [Music] 31:08 Usually when you wave these hands like that, it means they don't have anything. 31:18 Now the fate of the pirates is in the hands of CTF-150. In the operations room, Task Force 31:25 Commodore Pier Bigum Christensen discusses what to do with these pirates. 31:30 The last time Abselon captured pirates, she was ordered to drop them off safe and sound in Somalia. 31:38 It's a dilemma. In international waters, when pirates are caught in the act, the 31:44 government of the attacked ship has the option to press charges. If they don't, the pirates are released. 31:51 And uh right now, I know the international community is working on that uh uh very very hard to find a 31:58 legal background. So uh the uh the criminals the pirates can be uh prosecuted and onto them we are just uh 32:05 doing a job and uh doing the job as good as we can and uh that is fair enough. 32:20 These pirates got lucky. Charges will not be pressed. 32:27 The pirates are released and sent home without their weapons. 32:33 But right now, they can't go anywhere. Their engine is broken. And since 32:38 International Maritime Convention says no one can be abandoned on the open sea, 32:44 Absilon's crew repairs their engine and gives them gas. when they return to 32:50 Somalia, it's a good bet they'll buy more weapons and be back in the piracy 32:55 business in a week. Well, that's a that's a classic dilemma, but uh I will not call it frustration. 33:01 Um uh what we what we do is to uh to find to find the pirates and to disarm 33:07 them and uh we do whatever we can. Of course, um on the longer term, I and and 33:12 the staff would like to see uh a a longstanding solution. 33:19 For now, most of Abselon's crew can stand down. 33:24 It's a good time for a workout to relieve stress and to stay fighting fit. 33:30 For that, Absilon has a firstass gym. 33:37 [Music] 33:43 And Absilon must stay in ship shape as well. For many centuries, swabbing the 33:48 deck has been a tried andrue way to keep a ship looking good. 33:56 But below in the engine room, it is anything but good. A fuel line has 34:02 burst, spraying highly flammable diesel fuel everywhere. It's really dangerous because of the 34:08 high pressure diesel fumes, so they ignite like this. The leak has forced 34:13 engineers to shut down one of Absilon's two engines, limiting her speed to just 15 knots. In Pirate Alley, they always 34:21 need speed, so they have to repair the fuel line fast. 34:30 The timing couldn't be worse. An engine down and signs on radar that there are 34:35 more suspicious boats on the horizon. The operations room is crackling with reports as the crew coordinates response 34:42 plans. Uh yeah, we have had a very busy morning in fact and uh with uh at least two 34:48 confirmed attacks uh uh on the merchant shipping. One in the uh in the western 34:53 part of the Gulf of Aen and one attack in the eastern part of Gulf of Aen. 35:00 The Scanter 2001 surface surveillance system, one of the most advanced radar 35:06 systems in the world, helps track them. 35:11 Even in rough weather, it can lock on multiple small targets like fastmoving fishing boats kilometers away. 35:18 The issue with all modern systems is to have sensors with enough sensitivity to 35:24 actually uh catch those. is because it is very small targets or contacts the 35:30 the the pirate ships are using and right now radar is tracking two 35:36 separate attacks to li 35:42 one of them a Dutch cargo ship is inside Absalon's patrol box 35:48 but until Absilon repairs her engine all she can do is track the pirates 35:54 she needs all her power to reach the pirates before they attack again. 36:06 There's a pirate alert just kilometers from Absilon's position and a fuel line 36:11 to one of her engines has just sprung a leak. Abselon's speed has been cut in half. 36:19 Stoker Christian races to fix the broken line before a fire breaks out, endangering the ship. 36:32 As he finishes the repair, a new report comes in. The pirate attack has turned deadly. 36:41 The Dutch freighter is reporting that the pirates are firing on it. 36:47 Thank you for takeoff. Wind is green. Abselon 36:56 is still 24 km away, but close enough to launch her links to track the action. 37:05 Yes, we got a bit of visual picture of what's going on. When the civilian ships cry for help, we can tell them we've 37:11 seen we've seen what you uh we've seen the boat already. 37:18 Meanwhile, on board Absilon, a special forces team gets ready for action and a 37:24 sniper prepares his rifle. His deadly aim may also be needed. 37:30 We don't know anything right now, so we're just preparing if something is going on, 37:35 but uh if we're close, I'm going on the deck. On the flex deck, the boarding team gets 37:42 ready to launch an inflatable boat. 37:50 A crane will launch it off the stern while Absilon is still underway. There's not a moment to waste. 37:59 When it's deployed, it can reach a speed of 70 km an hour. 38:06 The Lynx confirms a suspicious boat near the freighter, 38:12 but Absilon has to be careful. The boat could be a decoy trying to draw Absilon 38:17 away from a real attack elsewhere. It's a ploy the pirates use called spoofing. 38:23 Of course, uh we have seen examples of of spoofing uh where where somebody is 38:29 being attacked and then suddenly there's another cry for help in another part of the area. So every time we are hearing 38:36 uh things like that, we have to carefully evaluate is this real or is it is it a spoofing. 38:43 Abselon is almost at the scene. Now her Lynx returns to refuel for the coming 38:48 action. To save time, it's topped up in the air. The logistics officer 38:54 coordinates the refueling and he'll keep his roster running and then he'll get the fuel and he'll be off 39:01 when he has [Applause] 39:11 If the links landed, it would take precious minutes to shut down, refuel, and then restart the engine. 39:20 But filling the helicopter's tanks in the air takes less than 2 minutes. 39:26 So that's always a calculation you have to make. What is the most sufficient way 39:32 to do it? The Lynx has to get back out there. The Dutch freighter's captain is calling for 39:38 help. This is no decoy. The pirates are shooting and people could die. 39:55 The sniper is now on deck and so are 50 caliber machine gunners who take their positions. Everyone is getting ready for 40:02 a firefight. The crew go to action stations. 40:16 The inflatable boats are closing in on the pirates. 40:22 On the bridge, there's tension as the captain watches the boarding teams head directly into harm's way. 40:36 Pirates are fighters, but they are not soldiers. They're unpredictable. Anything can happen. 40:45 The pirates are now in range of Abselon's guns. 40:54 Suddenly, there's a surprise. The freighter has decided to fight back. 41:07 HDMS Absilon is racing to help a Dutch freighter being attacked by pirates. 41:15 [Music] 41:21 She arrives at the scene of the crime to a startling new development. The freighter is fighting back. The crew 41:29 have thrown Molotov cocktails and fired a flare gun at the pirate boat. As 41:34 Absilon's helicopter hovers above, it fires warning shots. 41:43 The pilots watch the pirates jump into the water as the boat burns. 41:49 [Music] 41:57 Now they actually jumped in in the water in a combination I think from the flares thrown plus our warning shots. And then 42:03 we have another situation. But for us, it's important now that they actually 42:09 did try to push in and an and attack even though we were here. 42:17 Abselon's mission has just changed from rescuing a freighter to rescuing 42:22 pirates. The pirates are hauled into the special forces inflatable boat and escorted back 42:28 to Absilon as prisoners. Her flex deck is prepared for yet one more use, a 42:36 jail. 42:41 But the Danes still can't arrest these pirates. They can only hold them until a decision is made to press charges. 42:50 Their fate is debated by the Dutch and Danish governments, the captain and CTF-150. 42:57 The problem is when you have taken them, where are you then going to deliver the 43:03 pirates? Uh because not not every nation is willing to accept uh apprehended 43:11 pirates because their national law might prevent them from putting them to trial. 43:17 And even worse, most Muslim countries on the Gulf of Aiden are dictated by law to 43:22 execute pirates. So, for now, these pirates are brought 43:29 on board and kept under armed guard. They're either going to prison in Holland or 43:35 they're going home. 43:45 The Dutch government has agreed to press charges. If we can actually take pirates uh while 43:52 they are attacking a ship, we can always ask this ship's flag date, do you want 43:58 to prosecute them? It's your ship. It's your uh sailors that have uh risked 44:04 their life, are you able to prosecute these pirates? And normally they say, 44:09 yes, if you can provide us with the right evidence, we will certainly prosecute them. 44:20 And in this case, the five pirates were caught in the act. International conventions prevent them 44:27 from being filmed until they've had their day in court. As for their boat, the helicopter crew must ensure it 44:34 doesn't become a safety hazard at sea. 44:40 This is one pirate ship that will never sail again. Absilon's 45:01 [Music] work here is done. 45:08 She's heading for the nearest friendly port to turn over her prisoners. 45:14 As soon as she does, Absilon will head right back out into the Gulf of Aiden to 45:20 do what she does best, protect the busiest shipping lane in the world.

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