Russian forces storm tanker seized by Somali pirates

Source: BBC News

Russian forces have freed the crew of a Russian oil tanker seized by Somali pirates off the coast of Yemen, in a dramatic rescue operation.

Forces on the Russian warship Marshal Shaposhnikov approached the tanker with 23 Russian crew on board by helicopter.

As they did so, the pirates opened fire, sparking a shoot-out.

The Russian forces then abseiled onto the Moscow University tanker, freeing the crew who had locked themselves in a safe room after disabling their ship.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8664011.stm

well there is a word you maybe have never seen...unless you are a German rock climber

For some reason, Britain uses the German word, while the USA uses the French one (rappel).

I learned on the side of Nevis back in the '70s. It's huge fun without a wimpy descender clamp - just your back as a brake and gloves to prevent rope burns to your hands. I didn't, at the time, have the bottle to walk off forwards though.

You can use a belay device as a brake (especially one designed to be dual-use, that dissipates the heat a bit more), and I'd expect to have one of those with me anyway. It'd scare the crap out of me depending on just using my body (and my climbing partners, if I suggested I'd just use a shoulder belay for them!) No, face forwards doesn't appeal to me, either. :D

during and after WW2. They have some of the best Special Forces in the world, so it stands to reason that much of their lingo would catch on in that community.

earliest uses abseil as verb and noun:
1908 Sc. Mountaineering Club Jrnl. 10 124 Direct descent appeared impossible, and to save a long ascent it was found necessary to ‘abseil’ off into a gully cutting into the right wall.
1923 G. H. LEIGH-MALLORY in C. G. Bruce et al. Assault on Mount Everest iv. 136 Our allowance of rope was insufficient for operations which might require an ‘abseil’ on the descent.
1936 Cornhill Mag. May 585 On the descent..we had to resort considerably to abseiling, as many of the holds were filled with ice or loose snow.

and rappel:

1931 Times Lit. Suppl. 19 Feb. 129/3 On it (sc. Mont Blanc), climbing guideless, they practise every modern refinement, the use of crampons, scarpetti and the rappel.
1938 Fresno (Calif.) Bee 28 Aug. (Magazine section) 1/4 (caption) This feminine climber is descending from one of the Teton peaks by means of a rope. Climbers call this kind of descent ‘roping down’, or ‘rappelling’.
1950 Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 30 July T7 (caption) Mary Ruth Casebeer rappelled down the face of Grizzly Rock.

rather than the military.

The other side has problems with; fair play, honesty, black man as president, etc...

but I'd think that they were actually fast-roping, which I believe would be the preferred method in such a situation because it's faster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-roping

i thought abseiling onto a tanker might be like bordering a plane
bbc teaches me stuff and abc makes me more dumber

Abseiling (German: abseilen, "to rope down"), rappelling in American English,<1> is the controlled descent down a rope

Wonder if abseil was ever a SAT word? :P

Thanks everyone for pointing out the meaning of the word... the irony being that in a nation (U.S.) that continues to have German descendants making up the largest ethnic group, the word preference for this rope practice managed to instead be described using the "reviled" ("liberty fries" and other nonsense) French version. ;)

I think if they had to, they would have blown up the entire ship to prove that they're not bowing to any terrorists or pirates.