Originally aimed purely at sailors in high-risk areas, both at anchor and underway, this book has been 5 years in development and has since been expanded upon to cover superyachts, slower moving commercial vessels such as tugs and commercial shipping.

Published 12 years ago, updated 5 years ago

This definitive guide covers all subjects that need to be known when a vessel will transit through or be located in a high-risk area. The author, Peter King, has spent a career in the UK’s Special Boat Service, the world’s leading maritime Special Forces unit and from this and commercial experience gained in the last eight years, this book has been written.

The original book was written in 2008 when Peter worked on sailing yachts providing armed security.  After a year the book was extended to deal with super yachts and slow moving vessels such as tugs and workboats, but in late 2009 it was rewritten to deal with the scourge of piracy off the Somali coast and surrounding areas with commercial shipping in mind.

There is no other book that covers so much information within one volume; it is not designed to compete with the freely available BMP4 (Best Management Practices). The BMP is an ideal foundation of which to start one’s ship defenses upon, this guidebook shows all ways possible to defend your crew, vessel, and cargo against thieves and pirates. A picture paints a thousand words: and this manual is packed with helpful photographs, charts, and diagrams to make it easy to read, especially for those whose first language is not English.

Often, sailing yachts, superyachts and slowing moving vessels such as tugs, are not given any advice by the overworked and busy authorities, the book goes into great depth as how to best protect themselves whether it be off Somalia, South America, Malacca Strait, Gulf of Guinea or the Niger Delta, all areas that the author has worked in. It is hoped that this guidebook will help prevent incidents that occurred on the sailing yachts Carre D’as, Tanit, Quest, Mr. Bean, Serenity and Lynn Rival.

In 2012 the success rate of Somali pirates fell due to the success of the patrolling naval ships and assets and also the number of commercial ships using privately contracted armed security personnel.  In 2013, many attacks and suspicious approaches by armed pirates are not being reported, again this gives the wrong impression that creates an impression that piracy has declined and that the seas are now much safer; this could not be further from the truth.

Quality comes at a price and ship’s book are generally very expensive compared to general high street releases; containing 410 pages in color, this A4 book is very reasonably priced, any profits that it makes, a percentage will be donated to the worthy charities; Help for Heroes and the Special Boat Service Association. To ensure it remains current, a new edition will be released periodically. Due to electronic piracy, an electronic version will not be available

Title: Maritime Anti-Piracy The Captain’s Guidebook

Author: Peter King

Publisher: IMAAG Publishing

ISBN: 978-0-9583028-0-7

Release date: 15th March 2013

Price: £195.00 GBP ( + 23 24 hour DHL Courier)

Tel: +34 659 655 658

peter.king@imaag.co.uk