After the ransom for the Sirius Star, the highest-profile victim of Somali piracy, was delivered in January, an impromptu beach party started near Hobyu, the southern Somali town where it had been moored.

According to crew members of the Vella Gulf, a US warship which spent months watching the Sirius Star and the Faina, another captured ship, children ran around the beach, bonfires were lit and the pirates’ associates brought four-wheel drive vehicles on to the sand.