Two British and one Irish security guard have been plucked from the sea by a military helicopter after jumping from a chemical tanker seized by pirates off Somalia.

Their decision to abandon the two dozen crew members still on board attracted some criticism, but their British employer insisted that the three former soldiers were heroes who had resisted a sustained attack by heavily-armed pirates with great courage and would have been killed if they had stayed any longer.

“They were unarmed. They had no other option…As far as I’m concerned they deserve a medal,” said Nick Davis, a former British army pilot who runs Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions (APMSS) out of Poole, Dorset.

The attack happened early this morning as the Liberian-flagged tanker, the Biscaglia, was sailing through the Gulf of Aden from India to Rotterdam.

At 7.48am the captain sent out a distress call which was relayed to the Nivose, a French frigate that is part of the western naval task force protecting commercial shipping from Somalia’s ever-bolder pirates.

The Nivose would have taken two hours to reach the scene so it dispatched a helicopter, but by the time it arrived the six pirates had already seized the Biscaglia.

“There were three members of the crew on the roof (of the ship),” said Frederic Karakaya, the helicopter pilot. “They were hiding and signalled to us. They were spotted, and jumped into the water.

“We pretended we hadn’t seen them so we didn’t alert the pirates to their position. We dropped a coloured marker, then gave their position to a German Lynx (helicopter) which winched them aboard.”

The three guards, still wearing baseball caps and lifejackets, were deposited on the Nivose and later transferred to another French naval vessel, the Jean de Vienne. They were uninjured but have not yet been named.

At least 27 other crew members – 25 Indians and two Bangladeshis – were being held hostage on board the Biscaglia, which was reportedly heading for the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland.

One western aid official closely involved with Somalia told The Times that after all the calls for commercial vessels to hire security guards it was “somewhat ironic that they jump overboard to save themselves”.

But Mr Davis staunchly defended his team. He said they had been attacked by six pirates in a high-speed skiff armed with AK47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

He claimed the three guards – two former marines and an ex-paratrooper – held them off for about 40 minutes, long enough for the crew to send out a distress call and seek safety below deck.

They fired water cannon at the pirates, and zig-zagged. They also used a long range accoustic device (LRAD) which fires laser-like beams of excruciatingly-painful sound at attackers. They beat off three or four attacks but the pirates then began firing RPGs at the LRAD’s operator.

Mr Davis said the pirates continued to shoot at the security guards after boarding, and that the three men had no choice but to abandon ship. The pirates then fired on them while they were in the water, and tried to run them down in the hijacked vessel.

“They did what they felt they had to do to save their lives and the lives of the crew,” said Mr Davis, 37.

The Biscaglia is the 97th vessel this year to be attacked in the waters off Somalia, where Islamist insurgents are battling a weak, western-backed government and all semblance of law and order has broken down. At least 15 ships, and more than 300 crew members, are being held for ransom.

APMSS provides three-man teams of former soldiers to protect commercial vessels, and in recent weeks the demand for its services has soared. It presently has teams on ten ships off Somalia – each costing £14,000 for three days – and only last week Mr Davis boasted that “there has never been a successful boarding with a security force on board a vessel.

As the Biscaglia was seized, Somali pirates released a Greek-owned cargo ship, the Centauri, that they captured on Setpember 18. The crew of 25 Filipinos was unharmed. It was unclear whether the owners paid a ransom.

The ships still being held include the Sirius Star, a giant tanker carrying two million barrels of oil which was seized on November 15. Its captors have warned of “disastrous consequences” if its Saudi owners do not pay a $25 million ransom by tomorrow.

Times Online