(CBSNews) -- Updated 9:57 a.m. ET -- The four Americans aboard a yacht hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia are dead.How about we start to speak their language?
CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that gunshots aboard the yacht were heard, and the warship took action, dispatching forces to board the Quest.
"Bartender, give me a Somali Pirate."**********
"How do you make that?"
"Just a couple of shots and a quick splash."
RELATED: If you pay it...
...they will come...
Piracy has plagued the shipping industry off East Africa for years, but the violence used during the attacks - and the money demanded in ransoms - have increased in recent months. Pirates now hold some 30 ships and more than 660 hostages.
The average ransom now paid to pirates is in the $5 million range, a huge leap from only three or four years ago when it was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One ransom paid last year was just shy of $10 million.