French forces captured 11 pirates off the Somali coast yesterday in a raid that came hours after hijackers were thwarted in a fresh attempt to seize a US ship loaded with food aid.

The US-flagged Liberty Sun came under attack as pirates vowed to hunt American ships and kill those on board. The crew were able to repel the rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons fire by barricading themselves in the engine room while the ship’s master increased speed and steered the vessel into a series of turns.

By the time the destroyer USS Bainbridge arrived two hours later the gang had given up. Richard Phillips, the American captain who was rescued from pirates on Sunday, was on board the Bainbridge. The raid on Tuesday afternoon was the latest in a surge of attacks along the Somali coast. The pirates are holding 17 vessels and almost 300 seamen.

The French warship intercepted a pirate mother ship after tracking it from a failed attack on a Liberian-flagged vessel. A spokesman for the French Defence Ministry said that 11 gunmen were being held on board the ship, which is part of an EU anti-piracy force patrolling the region.

The crew of the Maersk Alabama, from which Captain Phillips was seized, flew home from the Kenyan port of Mombasa yesterday. “We are very happy to be going home,” William Rios, of New York, said. “We are disappointed to not be reuniting with the captain in Mombasa. He is a very brave man.”

Captain Phillips spent five days in a lifeboat before US Navy Seal snipers on the Bainbridge killed three of his captors and arrested the fourth. He was due to arrive in Mombasa yesterday but was prevented from doing so because of the detour to help the Liberty Sun.

The pirates vowed revenge after Captain Phillips was rescued. “We will seek out the Americans and if we capture them we will slaughter them,” said a 25-year-old pirate in the Somali port of Harardhere. “We will target their ships because we know their flags. Last night an American-flagged ship escaped us by a whisker.”

One crew member on board the Liberty Sun described the raid in an e-mail to his parents. “We are under attack by pirates, we are being hit by rockets, also bullets,” Thomas Urbik, 26, told his family in a message that was headed “I love you all”. He added: “We are barricaded in the engine room and so far no one is hurt.”

Crews have used high-pressure fire hoses and barbed wire to deter pirates. “If you let them know you’ve spotted them two to three miles away by blowing on your horn, increasing speed, putting your fire hoses on and adopting a gentle weave, then they’ll know you are on the radio calling in military assistance and will often give up,” said Nick Davis, who runs the Gulf of Aden Transit Group.

Four more ships were taken this week, however. Last year shipping lines paid $80 million (£53 million) in ransoms to the gangs.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, called last night for a co-ordinated international effort to fight piracy. She said that new strategies were required to prosecute and imprison pirates, to track and freeze their assets and to secure the release of ships still held in the region.

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