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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. The rescue this month of US Navy Captain Richard Phillips from captivity by Somali pirates put a dramatic end to a five-day standoff. Captain Phillips returned home to Vermont for a hero's welcome this part weekend. But back in the Gulf of Aden, the piracy continues. Pirates have hijacked more than 100 ships there in the past year. Filmmaker Jon Bowermaster has just returned from a journey aboard a passenger ship that was preparing to venture just past Somalia.

JON BOWERMASTER: Well, in preparation for moving this passenger ship through the Gulf of Aden, I watched them in Tanzania wrap the ship literally in razor wire, smear axel grease on the sides. They put grates over the back poop deck, which were electrified. They mounted fire hoses. They darkened all the portholes, and they took on a six-person mercenary crowd who apparently had done this kind of thing before.

MULLINS: How big was this ship?

BOWERMASTER: This was a 300-foot long passenger ship, pretty common size for ships of that nature.

MULLINS: Now, how does one go about wrapping a 300-foot ship in razor wire? Does it have to get lifted out of the water? Is it in dry dock? How does that work?

BOWERMASTER: No, no, no. Actually, they mounted hooks on the fantail of the ship and on the sides, and then they strung the razor wire from those hooks. And they also sprinkled broken glass on the razor wire to make it even more impenetrable. But think also of that notion of putting axel grease all around the sides of the ship, to make it really difficult for guys to climb up onboard – because the reality is that once these pirates get onboard, it's game over. You have to do everything you can to keep them off. And even big ships like that move at maybe 15 knots, and these pirates are in much faster boats. They can go 20, 25 knots. So they will catch you.

MULLINS: Once the ship left dock, what kind of precautions are taken then?

BOWERMASTER: Preparation is made for a kind of safe room for the Captain, because the Captain is the most valuable person on the ship. The crew is all counseled on what to do just in case they are taken by pirates, which includes typical hostage-taking things like, you know, “Don't sympathize with them.” And the irony of course is the people who are suffering most in these hijackings are not, you know, the staff necessarily. These boats are filled with Filipino crew members. Many of them are being held hostage now on land in Somalia.

MULLINS: That's still the case right now, that there are hostages being held – not only on land but at sea as well?

BOWERMASTER: Absolutely. And passage through the Gulf of Aden took the ship six days. And during the course of it, I was getting emails from friends who were still on the ship. You know, they would be up on the bridge and they would hear distress calls from ships being attacked, while they were sailing through. And just a couple of days ago, an Italian cruiseliner with passengers – with 1,000 passengers on it and apparently a handful of Israeli Special Forces guys – repelled pirates. I mean, I don't know what these pirates are thinking that they're going to go onboard a ship with 1,000 passengers on it. What are they going to do with 1,000 people?

MULLINS: Does it appear that the best kind of prevention if you have to travel that route, is having onboard some kind of defensive force?

BOWERMASTER: Well, it's clear that every ship moving through the Gulf of Aden is reconsidering how they go about it. Many of them are now bringing on special forces. I mean, the mercenary guys that I think for a long time were working in Iraq have now found a really good new gig, which is riding these ships back and forth through the Gulf of Aden.

MULLINS: Do you know that for sure, Jon?

BOWERMASTER: Well, certainly the half-dozen British guys that were taken onto the ship I had been riding had all previously been in Iraq.

MULLINS: Since you were there scouting out the region for a film on the history of the Indian Ocean, were you able to compare the motivation of pirates 500, 600 years ago and the pirates now?

BOWERMASTER: Well, what's fascinating is that the motivations of the pirates of today and the motivations of the pirates 500 years ago is very similar. You know, 500 years ago a lot of guys signed on with the pirates because they had really crummy jobs. They were made to work for a navy which they didn't necessarily like, and so they'd jump ship often and got better jobs with the pirates. And many of these Somali pirates are saying the same thing, that, you know, due to incredible poverty and over fishing, et cetera, joining on with the pirates is their only way out. I think one of my big curiosities and concerns as we moved along the coast of Africa was, these are Somalis for the moment who are doing the bulk of this. But you've got guys in Tanzania, in Kenya, in Mozambique looking, watching these pirates. I wouldn't be too surprised if this kind of activity increases rather than decreases.

MULLINS: Jon Bowermaster, thanks.

BOWERMASTER: Yeah. Thank you.

MULLINS: Writer and filmmaker Jon Bowermaster has just returned from a trip along Africa's Indian Ocean coast, where he saw the extraordinary precautions ship captains there are taking to fend off pirate attacks.

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