Sailors in the Gulf of Aden knew that pirate attacks often ended with the ship and crew being taken to Somalia—about ten hours’ sailing from the Brillante’s position. In Somalia, captured crews waited, sometimes for a very long time, while a shipowner or, more likely, the owner’s insurance company, negotiated a ransom. One particularly unfortunate group of sailors was held for more than four years in a remote town, four hundred kilometers from Mogadishu, before a bounty was paid. Three of them died during the hijack or in captivity; the rest survived by eating rats.
