Hostage is a day by day account of a British couple’s terrifying ordeal. On Oct. 23, 2009, Paul and Rachel Chandler were sailing from the Seychelles to Tanzania. Ninety miles offshore, their small yacht was boarded in the middle of the night by armed Somali pirates, “A skiff packed with shadowy figures is now almost upon us. A jumble of arms get ready to grab hold of our guard wires, men jostling to clamber on board, guns clattering… Without thinking, I put up my hands and shout, ‘No guns, no guns!’ I want them to know we are unarmed. A second skiff appears within seconds on the other side to complete the entrapment. My mind races. Who are these people and what do they want? But I have no time to think. They are hostile, and I must concentrate on staying alive… At least five rifles point menacingly at me” recounts Rachel Chandler who nevertheless manages to retain her sense of humor. When Buggas, the gang’s chief, refuses to wash with soap and demands shower gel instead , Rachel gives him, the first thing that comes to hand, Cif, abrasive household cleaner. Complaining that it isn’t lathering, she then hands him the washing-up liquid which he uses, followed by the rest of the gang, until the squeaking sound of the water pump indicates that the entire supply of fresh water has vanished away.
Five days later, the Chandlers are suddenly forced to leave their yacht, Lynn Rival. They hastily pack some clothes, the medicine chest, toiletries, playing cards, a diary, crosswords and passports into five small bags, their only possessions during their remaining 381 days’ captivity in Somalia.
Somali pirates do not wear eye patches, carry Kalashnikovs instead of swords and they use small, fast speedboats. When they locate a good target, they launch hooks and rope ladders up to board the ship and overwhelm the crew.
According to a BBC report, Somali pirates seized a record 1,181 hostages in 2010, and were paid many millions of dollars in ransom. In the fall of 2011, more than 300 hundred people were being held hostage by various pirate groups based in Somalia. The International Maritime Bureau considers the Somali coast to be the most dangerous stretch of water in the world. At any given time pirates are holding at least a dozen ships hostage including the occasional oil supertanker for which they can demand up to $25 million in ransom. By 2012, international naval patrols in the Gulf of Aden were making it difficult for Somali pirates to launch attacks. But, at least 40 vessels and more than 400 hostages are still being held in or just off Somalia, according to Eco terra International group which monitors piracy in the region.
The pirates who hijacked the Lynn Rival, could not believe that this middle-class and middle-aged couple, Paul Chandler, a Cambridge-educated civil engineer and Rachel Chandler, a former government economist, had little money. The Chandlers had sold most of their belongings and put the rest in storage in order to embark on a cruising life. They no longer possessed a bricks-and-mortar home: Lynn Rival was their home.
According to Paul, the pirates were terribly naïve and ignorant of the real world. They couldn’t understand why the Chandler’s could not raise a lot of money. In their mind, the United Kingdom has a population of 60 million and everyone can give a dollar.
“There was no cynicism or malice, because if it had been the other way round, they thought, well, everyone in my clan would give money. That’s the basis of their existence. So that was their genuine belief,” explains Paul.
Through the help of private consultants the family was able to negotiate the ransom money with the kidnappers who eventually agreed to be paid $440,000 instead of the initial sum of $7m. Although the cash was dropped from a plane on June 17, 2010, the hostages were kept five more months. Their release was finally secured through the help of a Somali taxi driver, Dahir Abdullahi Kadiye who arrived with his family, in Britain from Somalia, as refugees in 1997. So ashamed of his countrymen’s criminal activities, he succeeded in raising around $200,000 from the Somali diaspora in the United Kingdom.
Hostage tells us how the Chandlers survived living in makeshift desert camps, on a diet of goat’s liver, rice and spaghetti. For a long time, Rachel believed she would rather die than pay a ransom. In an interview the Chandlers gave to the Guardian last October, Rachel admitted that she very selfishly couldn’t imagine the idea that they would just lose everything, and would have to start from scratch.
“The idea that we’d be left with nothing and that our dream of sailing the world was just finished, at first I was grieving that. I didn’t want to lose everything” she said.
Her husband took a different stand. He was anxiously trying to get his family to have access to the couple’s joint bank account, their life’s savings. However a British law prevented anyone from doing that because they were considered to be “under duress”.
“I never thought about the emotions” Paul said, “I don’t do that with emotions. I just thought, let’s get out of here. My view right throughout was, I will do absolutely anything to get us out of here. And I would have done anything, I didn’t worry about the future. If we had to sell everything and be left penniless, I thought, well I’ll deal with that problem when it occurs.”
Since their release, the Chandler’s live in the house of Paul’s father, who passed away a few months before their release. Although they said that the Foreign Office offered their family little more than “tea and sympathy”, they understand the government’s policy not to negotiate with kidnappers. Rachel however, strongly believes that their family needed to know how to form a crisis-management team. “Also our captors were very aware that media coverage would increase their chances of getting a lot of money for us, but the Foreign Office never advised a media blackout” says Rachel.
The family, in turn, insists that they are not expected to repay the ransom in the short term. They are currently restoring their yacht which was recovered by the British navy. They are planning to go sailing again by the end of this year.
Seven of the Pirates who hijacked the Chandler’s yacht have been arrested for a similar attack on a French vessel, and are standing trial in Kenya. As for the Chandlers, they suffered no emotional breakdown, no lingering memories and no survivors guilt. “Being an ex-hostage is not going to rule our lives” says Rachel, and Paul agrees, “I don’t want to be an ex-hostage. I mean, I am an ex-hostage, obviously. But I don’t want to be defined by that.”
The Chandlers survived a harrowing ordeal thanks to their strong and unwavering belief in each other. Hostage reveals the power of true love in exceptionally harsh circumstances when death seemed preferable to being separated.
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