The head of the Royal Navy admitted his frustration yesterday at the fact that armed sailors were unable to rescue a British couple from Somali pirates — despite being nearby when they were captured.

Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Service, praised the crew of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Wave Knight for locating the hijacked yacht of Paul and Rachel Chandler.

However, he said there was no one on board trained in hostage rescue, and any action by the crew could have led to the Chandlers being killed. “Two dead Chandlers would not have been good, and we wouldn’t have wanted to be part of that,” Admiral Stanhope told The Times.

Mr Chandler, 59, and his wife, 55, from Tunbridge Wells, had set off from the Seychelles bound for Tanzania in their yacht, Lynn Rival, and were kidnapped by Somali pirates on October 23.

Admiral Stanhope, who succeeded to the top naval job in July, said: “It’s a huge piece of water and the fact that Wave Knight found the yacht was impressive, but we were not in a position to engage [the pirates]. We were too late for that.

“You need special expertise to deal with hostage rescue, and we didn’t have that expertise [on board]. Sailors with pistols couldn't do the job of ensuring the safety of the Chandlers. It was highly frustrating.

“There were broad rules of engagement that had to be followed, and it was a fairly easy decision to make, because the security of the Chandlers was the most important thing.”

The couple were taken from their yacht and moved to the pirates’ motor launch. There was a Lynx helicopter on board Wave Knight, a replenishment vessel with a crew of 25 Royal Navy sailors and 75 merchant seamen. “But what could it do under the circumstances?” Admiral Stanhope asked. “Wave Knight is not a warship. There was only a flight [helicopter crew and engineers] on board, and as soon as they got close, the pirates threatened the hostages.

“They did the best they could, but the security of the Chandlers was the overriding factor.”

The admission by the Ministry of Defence last week that a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel was in the vicinity of the hijacked yacht while the pirates were still present conflicted with an earlier statement which said that a Royal Navy warship had spotted the yacht drifting, with no sign of the couple.

The MoD said the earlier statement had been put out “for operational reasons”.

The Chandlers are now in Somalia, and the pirates have demanded a $7 million (£4.2 million) ransom for their release.

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