Peter Gwin

Today we have a “local lad makes good” story.

If you take National Geographic Magazine, you may have read about his recent adventure on the Strait of Malacca or heard him interviewed on NPR, but didn’t recognize his name.

Peter Gwin is the name and pirates are his game. Real, honest-to-goodness modern pirates. He traveled with them, learned some of the secrets of the trade, and made the Big Time: His article – “Dark Passage – The Malacca Strait” – is one of the four features appearing in this month’s issue.

The piece also appears on the National Geographic website in its entirety. Go to www.ngm.com/0710, then look for “Dangerous Straits.” His field notes are also online.

The oldest of the three sons of Julius and Dorene Gwin, Peter, now 41, did most of his growing up in Peachtree City. His brothers are Geoffrey, a broker on Wall Street, and Timothy, associate pastor at Carriage Lane Presbyterian Church.

Peter got on National Geographic’s staff as a writer in 2003, but this is the first major feature he proposed and then wrote. It was called to my attention by retired Fayette County educator Joan Houghton who is a member of Julius Gwin’s Sunday school class at Carriage Lane. He told the class about Peter’s traveling to Malacca earlier this year and asked them to pray for his safety.

Peter was in Joan’s English classes; she gives him an A on this story. “The article has excellent writing and absolutely fascinating content,” she says.

She is particularly proud that Peter was a member of McIntosh High School’s first graduating class, the Class of 1984, “uniquely as ‘seniors’ for four years,” she says. His was also the first class to go all the way through J.C. Booth Junior High School (now Middle School.)

Peter got his degree in English from Furman University, Class of 1988. Great background, but what could a college teach a writer about pirates? Or the Malacca Strait? His “graduate work” was teaching English in Botswana and traveling extensively in Africa.

The Malacca Strait is the main sea passage between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Still can’t place it? Singapore perches on the edge of Malaysia. One glance at a map and you’ll see why it’s easy pickin’ for pirates who attack freighters and tankers in this natural bottleneck.

In an interview on NPR last Saturday morning, Peter said that piracy is not the “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” romance of adventure books. It’s “all about economics,” he said, and, yes, a certain amount of tradition. Peter asked a pirate why he’d taken up this career. “Partly for the money, but it is fun, like James Bond,” he replied. Modern pirates rob sailors, kidnap crews, and steal entire ships, according to the blurb on the credit page.

The International Maritime Bureau recorded 258 pirate attacks since 2002. Some of the pirates are out-of-work ships’ crewmen, who become collaborators familiar with the layout of a targeted ship.

There’s no end of prey. More than a thousand ships make the passage through the strait each week, but it is difficult to know how many are attacked. Shipping companies would rather write off their losses than risk their reputation or lose their insurance.

And the brigands brag that they can throw a spell to make a ship’s crew stay asleep. On a moonless night, they can be invisible and bulletproof, and can board ships undetected.

The pirates told Peter they could make a pirate out of him. By daylight they maneuvered their small boat through one of the numerous mangrove islands in the strait, where they cut bamboo to fashion into a hook which can be slung upward to catch a ship’s rail.

Peter found it surprisingly easy to inch his way up the bamboo pole when they practiced in a mangrove island. But how would they get away with climbing onto a ship? In broad daylight?

They putted nonchalantly to a cargo ship moored outside the harbor, waving to the crewmen who were hanging out laundry. His “trainer” showed him the “hole,” a spot under a curved hull where it is impossible to be seen from the deck, day or night. The hole looked safe enough with the ship at anchor, but illegal boarders work perilously close to the ship’s huge propeller, a bad place to be when the craft is underway.

(Has anyone told Dorene when she should start worrying?)

When Peter is not in Piracy 101, he’s at home in Alexandria, Va. with his wife, the former Cathy O’Brian, and their two small daughters.

And how did he get on with National Geographic? “By being persistent,” his mother says. An earlier gig as writer and editor with Europe Magazine in Washington put him in a good position both geographically and professionally.

“Dark Passage – The Malacca Strait,” says the story’s title page.

“Pirates haunt it. Sailors fear it. Global trade depends on it.”

And Fayette County brags on it.