Today is Sunday, February 7, 2021.

On this day in 2012, Somali pirates captured the Greek-owned merchant vessel, the

Free Goddess, and took its crew hostage. They would remain in captivity for eight months.

Welcome to Today in True Crime, a Spotify original from Parcast. Today we're covering the

capture of a cargo ship by Somali pirates. Let's go back to the evening of February 7, 2012,

near the island of Sukotra.

She was called the Free Goddess, and despite the honorific, she was a typical bulk carrier for those waters.

A long steel vessel with a bright orange hull, she flew the Liberian flag, but was owned by

Greeks and crewed by 21 Filipino sailors. Her current mission was a routine one.

Deliver a cargo of nearly 20,000 tons of steel cable from Adabia, Egypt to Singapore.

The trip was supposed to take around two weeks, but the most treacherous waters came right at the start.

Before breaking out into the Indian Ocean, the free goddess would have to pass through the Gulf of Aden.

The Gulf of Aden is a large waterway that lies south of the Arabian Peninsula and north of the African country of Somalia at the mouth of the Arabian Sea.

It's been an important channel for shipping

routes since the times of ancient Greece. And in 2012, its waters were considered the most

dangerous in the world. Since around 2000, the violence and unrest brought on by civil war in

the country of Somalia led to an explosion of piracy along its

northeast coast, and particularly in the Gulf of Aden. Large pirate crews patrolled the area

in stolen fishing and shipping vessels called mother ships. When they spotted a cargo or passenger

ship, they would send out a few small speedboats to

chase the target down.

The cover of darkness was critical so that the pirates could capture the ship before

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