Indeed, not long after the ship was reported missing, the United States Embassy in Colombo received a fax claiming the Tigers had seized it on the high seas.
In May that year, the Guardia di Finanza boarded a £17 million mega-yacht owned by Flavio Briatore, the Formula One tycoon, and seized it on suspicion of tax evasion.
Seeing that Dorchester Heights, just south of Boston, commanded the city and harbour and that Howe had unaccountably failed to occupy it, he seized it on the night of March 4, 1776, placing his Ticonderoga guns in position.
In Donetsk, several hundred militants who have proclaimed an independent "Donetsk Republic" and demanded a referendum on secession have fortified their position with barbed wire and tire barricades since seizing it on Sunday.
France kept its fleet but the British feared the Germans would seize it, so on 3 July, the British attacked it.
And I intend on seizing it.
"Strengthen management of the Internet, enhance guidance of opinion, purify the environment on the Internet, give no opportunities that lawless elements can seize on," it said.
It was plausible, elegant and easy to explain — but there was no Republican leader with the wit to seize on it and sell it.
Opposition Twitter users were quick to seize on it when commenting on the fate of Krymsk, the town where most of the flood victims perished.
Rodgers and Hammerstein seize on it and find in it a lyrical outpouring that emerges unforced from a well of emotion too deep to be expressible in words.
