Well, this seems quite unprecedented: telling cruise ship passengers to disembark until the pirates have passed. What a statement about how the Somali miscreants have really hijacked the high seas, and not just freighters:

“A German cruise ship plans to evacuate passengers in Yemen and fly them to the next port of call Wednesday to avoid any possible encounters with pirates off the coast of lawless Somalia.


Several other cruise operators said Tuesday they were also shifting or canceling tours that would have taken clients past Somalia, as nations and companies around the world debated how to confront the piracy dominating the Gulf of Aden.


The European Union said its anti-piracy mission would station armed guards on vulnerable cargo ships — the first such deployment of military personnel during international anti-piracy operations in the crucial waterway.


But that deployment would not cover cruise ships, and at least two companies have already altered or canceled routes that would have brought passengers within the reach of pirates.


…Passengers will take a charter flight to Dubai and spend three days at a five-star hotel waiting to rejoin the 150-meter (490-foot) vessel in Oman’s port of Salalah for the remainder of the trip. The Hamburg-based company called the shift a ‘precautionary measure.’”

It was also reported today that crewmen held on a hijacked Ukrainian ship for 10 weeks now tried to overpower their captors, a mutiny that angered the Somali pirate spokesman: “Some crew members on the Ukrainian ship are misbehaving. They tried to harm two of our gunmen late Monday. This is unacceptable, they risk serious punitive measures. Somalis know how to live and how to die at the same time, but the Ukrainians’ attempt to take violent action is misguided.”