Business Man Aboard Ship That Outran Pirates
Original Story from Johnson City Press
The founder of Pal’s Sudden Service drive-ins had just been telling his wife about the upsurge in piracy in the area their cruise ship was sailing Sunday when he looked out a cabin window and saw — pirates.
“They’re fine, they’re actually on their way to Dubai and they’re going to be there tomorrow,” Pal Barger’s stepdaughter, Christy Stout, said Wednesday.
Pal and Sharon Barger are in the middle of a monthlong cruise and were in the Gulf of Aden, between Yemen and Somalia, when the M/S Nautica was fired upon by six pirates in two speedboats.
“We were really worried,” Stout said of the brief period when she and her husband knew the Bargers’ ship had been attacked but didn’t know yet if everyone was safe. The Bargers and another Kingsport couple, Dr. Howard and Valdonna Mize, left Rome a couple weeks ago aboard the Nautica and are due home Dec. 22.
“My husband was like, ‘Christy, there’s pirates going after your parents,’ ” Stout said of her first knowledge of the incident Sunday morning.
Stout said that according to Sharon Barger, the speedboats got close enough to take a couple shots at the liner.
“My mom did say the weird part about it was that passengers were actually taking pictures of the pirates,” Stout said.
According to Stout, the Bargers and Mizes were in their private rooms when the incident occurred. Ironically, Pal Barger had just been mentioning the upsurge in piracy near Somalia, a country in the Horn of Africa that basically has become a failed state where the degree of lawlessness allows the pirates to operate with impunity.
continue reading at Johnson City Press [LINK]
By: Jeff Keeling
Press Business Editor
February 6th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
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