Attack at Cow/Bull Bay in St. Thomas Jamaica

Created by doina. Last modified on 2006-03-14 11:31:57
Contributors:
Countries: Jamaica

Anchored at Cow/Bull Bay in St. Thomas Jamaica (N 17 53.940 W 76 37.547), at 1:30am in the morning, December 16 2005, we were awoken by someone walking on our deck. Two men had boarded our vessel, one with an assault rifle. There was a third man in a canoe style fishing boat with an outboard motor. The men were interested in money, drugs and guns. We directed them to our cash on board and they took in total about $4000 in money, electronics jewelry and alcohol. There was gunfire from shore during this process and they abruptly left our boat, telling us not to leave or we will be killed. We immediately prepared our guns that were hidden, and started pulling up anchor when they returned (approx. 3 minutes after they left). This time there were 5 men, 3 with assault rifles on the canoe boat. Once the men started boarding our boat again without permission, I open fired with a handgun and cleared my boat. No shots were return fired as the assailants were quite sure we were unarmed and this took them by surprise. I continued to pull up anchor and head towards Kingston, while hailing on VHF channel 16. The Jamaican Coast Guard responded about 30 minutes after continuous hailing, and met us 1.5 hours after the incident at the entrance to the harbor. Processing of the incident took all day with 3 different police forces, as was quite thorough, though nothing has come of the event to date (1 month later).

In our unexpected one month stay in Jamaica, I believe that this is a beautiful country with very friendly people and is worth the difficulties to visit, but one must exercise great caution and only go directly to a marina location (special thanks to Carlos at Morgans Harbor Marina and Nigel and Conrad from the Yknot).

I request that the last line be included as I believe that people should at least know that pirates do not make up the majority of Jamaica. Thanks Jason Walsh.