It was calm, partly cloudy, and silent, apart from the hum of generators and the sloshing of breakers.Ī 40-year-old able seaman named Allan Marquez stayed up to keep watch on the bridge. They were 12 nautical miles off the Yemeni coast. On the evening of July 5, Gonzaga ordered the crew to cut the engine and drift while they awaited the guards’ arrival the next morning. They knew the ship’s owner, a company called Suez Fortune Investments Ltd., had arranged for a small security team to rendezvous off the Yemeni port of Aden, as an escort through the most dangerous part of their journey.
Most of the crew had faith that would never happen. Deep inside the tanker, they stocked a mechanical space with food, water, radios, and medical supplies-a panic room in the event pirates did come aboard. Around the deck’s perimeter they fitted coils of razor wire, aimed eight high-pressure hoses for blasting attackers off the hull, and propped up a scarecrow in overalls, to suggest the presence of a watchman. The Brillante’s crew of 26 Filipinos, including Tabares and the ship’s captain, Noe Gonzaga, 57, set up the standard deterrents. It was July 2011, and the threat of Somali piracy in the Gulf of Aden had never been more severe.
With a top speed of less than 13 knots and stretching 300 yards from bow to rusting stern, the black-hulled Brillante was plodding into the world’s most dangerous shipping lane with a cargo worth $100 million. It was his 13th day at sea aboard the oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso, and as the ship turned east, into the pirate-strewn waters off Somalia, the 54-year-old chief engineer would have understood that it made for an obvious target. Nestor Tabares must have known the hijackers were out there, waiting.