A Captain's Duty

by Richard Phillips

  “Guys, someone proceed to the bridge immediately. Our shipmate is up there alone. All the pirates are with me now. Grab him and lock him up so he doesn’t wander off again!”

  I felt a surge of adrenaline. I’d won Round One. Now to survive the rest.

  TWELVE

  Day 1, 1530 Hours

  THE PIRATES CHALLENGE OBAMA’S PRE-9/11 MENTALITY.

  —Wall Street Journal

  SOMALI PIRATES HAND OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY EMERGENCY WITH NO EASY SOLUTION.

  —FOX News

  Things started to happen quickly. Young Guy joined the three of us near the MOB. I saw Shane and Mike three stories above on the bridge wing looking down. The crew still had the Leader down below—and there was plenty of steel between Shane and Mike and the pirates, so they weren’t worried about being captured. But the Somalis were unpredictable. They might charge up the ladders shooting at anyone they saw. Shane and Mike began issuing orders over the radio to the crew, who were emerging out of the aft watertight door to the port side, where the emergency generator was.

  I especially didn’t want Shane or Mike to get nabbed. They were intelligent and they had balls and they were the vital cogs in getting the Maersk Alabama powered up and sailing away. The crew needed them to make good their escape.

  “Hey, Cap, you okay?” Shane called down to me. On his face, I saw fear—not for himself, but for me.

  I gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Everything’s good,” I said. It was true. I felt the end of this ordeal coming into view. The adrenaline that had seeped into my veins in quarts now began to ebb.

  But the MOB was still only a couple feet off its cradle. I had to get it moving faster and for that, I needed juice. I got on the radio.

  “Chief, I got to get this davit powered up or we’ll be here until the morning.”

  “Roger that.”

  The ship started to come alive above and below me. Men were scurrying out of their hiding places and running to get systems up and running: hydraulics, backup power, electricity, air. The pirates were a few feet away from me, watching the MOB lift and turning to check the horizon.

  “Okay, the boat will be in the water soon,” I said. I wanted to keep them cool and collected.

  My radio was crackling with Mike giving orders to various crew members and status updates.

  “Who’s that?” Young Guy shouted.

  I looked over. I saw a shadow on the aft deck and then it was gone.

  “You got me,” I said to the pirate.

  I keyed my radio. “Chief,” I said softly. “Tell these guys to keep close to the bulkhead. The pirates are going to see them.”

  He radioed a warning to the crew.

  Shane called down on the radio. He could see that I was having trouble getting the davit to work. I was hand-cranking it up from its cradle, as the emergency power still hadn’t clicked on.

  “You want me to send the bosun down to help you launch the boat?”

  “No, I do not,” I said. “I don’t want to give them any more hostages. I can launch the boat. You guys just keep out of sight and keep an eye on these pirates. I can’t see them all the time and I don’t want them showing up with a crew member in their clutches again.”

  “Roger,” Shane said.

  “What’s taking the power so long?” I called on the radio. “Tell the chief engineer there might be some switches flipped on the emergency generator panel. The Somalis were messing with them.”

  I heard the information passed down the line over the radio.

  Then I started bossing the pirates a little bit. Once you’re a captain, it’s hard to let go of old habits. I also wanted to keep them busy, so they wouldn’t notice what was happening with my men.

  “Okay,” I barked at Musso, “get over here. You work the motor mount. Make sure you don’t damage the prop when we clear the cradle. You”—pointing at Young Guy—“get in the boat. You’re the counterbalance. You’re going to keep the prop up so the engine doesn’t drop and snag. And you”—Tall Guy—“you can do something over there.”

  Tall Guy was on the radio with the chief engineer. They were like buddies now.

  “Chief, what’s the matter with the ship?”

  “Ship is a no-go, pirate,” Mike said.

  “Chief, why you such a problem?” And the pirates started to laugh.

  “Hello, my friend,” I called. “Get off your ass and start doing some work or we’ll never get out of here.”

  Shane must have heard this.

  “That’s my Cap,” he said, loud enough so I could hear him, and laughing at the same time. “Now he’s ordering the pirates around.”

  It was surreal. The mood had turned jovial. Suddenly we were just a bunch of guys trying to get a job done, and enjoying ourselves while we did it. For a few minutes, the pirates and the crew were no longer adversaries. That wouldn’t last long.

  Forty minutes in, we got power on the davit. I swung the boat out over the edge of the ship.

  “Okay, everybody in,” I said. “Jump in the boat and I’ll follow.”

  Just then, a thought flashed across my mind. The emergency release. The MOB had a release system mid-ship that sits about shoulder high. It consisted of a trailer hitch pin and a lever. If you pulled the pin and dropped the lever, the boat released from its metal brace and dropped to the water forty feet below. The mechanism could come in handy when you needed to get off a ship fast, when a fire was raging on your deck or the vessel was about to turn turtle and take you down to the bottom of the Atlantic.

  The thing was, I had to be on the boat to pull the pin. I couldn’t do it from the Maersk Alabama’s deck. So I’d have to pull the pin, drop the lever, and in the same instant grab hold of the metal brace and let the boat fall to the water. Boom, boom, boom. I’d be left dangling off the side of the ship while the Somalis plunged toward the ocean. They’d probably break their backs at the very least. Water doesn’t compress, which means it’s no more forgiving than concrete when you’re dropping onto it from a distance.

  Once the boat was away, I could swing back onto the deck like Indiana Jones.

  But if I didn’t manage to catch the brace, I’d be dead. Or if my foot tangled in a rope as the MOB dropped, I’d be dead. Or if one of the pirates survived and fired off a few rounds at the bastard who’d nearly killed him, I’d be dead.

  I was making the final preparations to lower the boat. The pirates were finding their seats and spreading out over the MOB’s benches. I had maybe thirty seconds to decide.

  Can I grab it quick enough? I thought. I just didn’t know. My hands practiced the maneuver in the air. Pull, release, grab. Pull, release, grab. All in a split second. I tried to picture it in my mind. It was that last step that I fixated on. Will my fingers slip off the metal? Will I have dropped too far to grab hold?

  Finally, I said the hell with it. Let me just get these guys in the water. The pirates lost their ladder when they boarded, so they had no way to get back aboard. Good enough for me.

  That was what I call my second mistake. For the next four days, I came back to that moment over and over again. I kept thinking, I should have dropped those suckers. If I ever get another shot, I’ll drop them without a second thought.

  Back home in Vermont, they didn’t know anything about the hijacking. Andrea had been sick all day Tuesday with a flu bug that had knocked her out. Her mother insisted that her sister Lea come over to take care of her. So that Wednesday morning, Lea was getting ready for work. It was sunny but cold, a typical Vermont March morning.

  Around 7:30 a.m., Lea was heading out to her truck when the phone rang. It was 3:30 p.m. in Somalia, which is eight hours ahead. It was our neighbor, Mike Willard, who lives up the road and works as an engineer in the merchant marine.

  Andrea remembers Mike’s voice was a little odd. “What’s the name of Rich’s ship again?” he said.

  “Why, what just happened?” Andrea said.

  “Andrea, what’s the ship’s nam
e?”

  “The Maersk Alabama.”

  “I think… I think they were just hijacked. I’m coming right up.”

  Andrea couldn’t believe it. She didn’t panic right away, because she knew that sailors get kidnapped regularly and they were all sent back home safe and sound once the ransom was paid. She ran outside to get her sister before she pulled away. Andrea was calling, “Lea, Lea, Rich has been hijacked. Don’t go, don’t go.” Then they both ran into the house and turned on CNN.

  Mike started making phone calls to the company, since he works for the same firm that I do. They were desperately trying to find out if the early reports were true. Meanwhile, Andrea ran to the computer and typed out a quick e-mail to me at 11:29 a.m.

  Richard—

  I am aware of what is going on. I am with you all the way. Keeping the faith…I love you with all my heart.

  LOVE ANDREA.

  I wouldn’t get it until after the ordeal was over.

  Andrea went back to the TV, which was her only source of news at that point. In a twist of fate, a Fox news crew had been up at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy shooting a feature on some totally unrelated subject. It turned out that Shane Murphy’s dad, Joseph, was an instructor there, and when the news came out about the pirates, they rushed to talk to him. Shane had called Joseph Murphy from the Maersk Alabama. Joseph described the hijacking, saying, “My son, the captain…” Andrea was like, “What happened to Rich?” It was upsetting to her to constantly hear news of the hijacking but nothing about me.

  As the morning went on, Andrea called our kids, Dan and Mariah, who were away at college. She wanted them to hear the news from their mother and not from some reporter or something. She left Mariah a message: “I want you to call me. It’s about Dad—he’s okay, as far as I know, but I want you to hear it from me.”

  Andrea ran back to the TV. Shane Murphy was still being called “the captain of the Maersk Alabama,” and she didn’t hear a single mention of me. For my wife, it was like I’d disappeared off the face of the earth.

  THIRTEEN

  Day 1, 1900 Hours

  The White House is closely monitoring the apparent hijacking of the U.S.-flagged ship in the Indian Ocean and assessing a course of action to resolve this issue. Our top priority is the personal safety of the crew members onboard.

  —White House statement, April 8, 2009

  I lowered the MOB to the water with myself and the three pirates in it. The davit put us down with a nice smooth touch. I looked up at my ship. Suddenly, it looked like an ocean liner. Just huge.

  “They can still strafe the ship,” I said into the radio. “Keep the guys out of harm’s way.”

  The fuel was still on the deck. Shane’s head popped over the side of the boat.

  “Hey, Cap,” he called.

  “We’re almost there, Shane,” I said. “Start lowering the fuel.”

  The pirates really wanted that extra diesel. They were going to be anxious until it and the Leader were onboard. I turned to see Tall Guy and Musso sitting on the benches, their guns on their laps, the muzzles pointed toward me.

  Shane disappeared. A minute later, the first bucket appeared over the side of the ship and Shane lowered it. When it was five feet above the water, he let it drop. The bucket plunged beneath the surface and then he pulled it back up, water streaming down the sides.

  I laughed. Great minds think alike. Shane was trying to foul the gas so it would mess up the MOB’s engine.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, keying the radio. “I already got enough water in those things.” The Somalis were going to find themselves two hundred miles from shore with a useless hunk of metal for an engine.

  Bucket after bucket came down. When I grabbed the last one and set it down, Musso spoke up.

  “Okay, we need more fuel and some food,” he said.

  I gave him a look.

  “More fuel? Where are you headed—Disney World?”

  He laughed. The pirates were back on their element—the water—and they had an American captain as a hostage. In their minds, they hadn’t lost a thing. So Musso could afford to crack up at my jokes.

  I wanted to get the MOB away from my ship. I took the vessel about one hundred yards off the ship’s port quarter and killed the engine. We drifted, waiting.

  I called on the radio and ordered up the extra supplies. Shane went to the mess and rounded up some night lunch. Night lunch is what the cook puts out for the evening and early morning watches, or anyone who is clinically insane enough to want to eat it. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what’s in the night lunch. But we have another name for it: “horse cock.” That’s actually an insult to horse penis. I’ve had cooks who’ve put out the same stuff for a week straight, until there was so much mold growing on it you could make your own penicillin. The stuff is just unbelievable.

  It also contains pork. I did know that. So it was Shane’s final “fuck off” to the Somalis, who wouldn’t be caught dead eating the stuff.

  Everything was working fine. We were finally prepared for the exchange. I saw Shane running around, getting ready.

  “Okay, we’re ready,” Shane said on the radio.

  “Roger that,” I said. I hit the ignition on the MOB.

  Nothing.

  I hit the ignition again. Nothing. Don’t do this to me, I thought. Hit it again and it was silent—not even trying to turn over.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  The pirates were looking at me.

  “Something wrong, Captain?” Musso said.

  “It’s dead. Move over. I need to check the batteries.”

  The MOB was supposed to be on a constant charge. Both its batteries should have been topped up automatically from its connection to the ship’s grid. But when I checked the charging switch, I saw it was set to one battery only. The right one had been getting all the juice, but now it was drained, too. When I switched from both batteries to the right one, the engine just went woooo, woooo, woooo and wouldn’t catch.

  “Shane, we got a problem,” I said into the radio.

  “What is it?” Shane called back.

  “Batteries are dead.”

  I heard him breathe out.

  “That’s it. Ball game over.”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  I got some tools out and started working. I checked all the connections, praying there might be a loose wire. But everything looked good. It was the batteries for sure.

  Now came mistake 2.5. I didn’t want to get off the MOB. It was an open boat. If anyone did show up to help us, there was nowhere for the pirates to hide. True, we would have been broiling under a hot sun, but anyone with a rifle could have taken the Somalis out as easy as wooden ducks at the carnival.

  I should have stayed right there. But I was in a problem-solving mode, eager to get things done. With the MOB dead, I moved to the only option left: The lifeboat.

  The lifeboat is an enclosed craft about ten feet high and twenty-five feet long. It’s bright orange, powered with a single outboard, with backward-facing rows of seats inside and a raised cockpit with windows, where you can steer the vessel. It drops from its mount, free-falling forty-five feet into the water with a big splash. And it was the last option left.

  “Listen, we have to row back to the ship,” I said. “This boat ain’t taking us anywhere.”

  We rowed back and tied up alongside the Maersk Alabama. “Level your weapons,” I said to the pirates as we moved in. I didn’t want them pointing their AKs up at the crew as we approached.

  The third engineer and the bosun got on the lifeboat up on the deck, after loading the extra fuel and the food. The life-boat requires only one man aboard during launching, but the third engineer refused to get out. He wanted to be there in case I needed his help.

  Shane wanted to be the one in the lifeboat, but I told him he was now the captain aboard the Maersk Alabama and he needed to stay where he was.

  “But I’ll be putting someone in danger,” he said.
<
br />   “Welcome to the job,” I said.

  When they were ready to go, Shane radioed me.

  “Okay,” I said, turning to the pirates. “Don’t get crazy, this thing drops like a stone and it makes a lot of noise.”

  They nodded.

  With a tremendous splash, the lifeboat dove into the water and then popped back up. My crew members came alongside the MOB and we began transferring food and fuel into our new vessel. We changed places with the bosun and third engineer and, thankfully, the pirates made no attempt to take them with us. What I didn’t find out until later was that the third engineer and the bosun were both carrying concealed knives. They were ready to jump the Somalis at the first opportunity, but they didn’t get a chance.

  “Good luck,” I said to the bosun as we were getting ready to shove off in the lifeboat. “Make sure they get you back up quick. And if something happens to me, don’t worry about it. Just get the hell out of here. Don’t worry about the MOB boat either. The pirates might swing around and try to take that, too.”

  I started the lifeboat up and the engine came to life. The third engineer and the bosun threw us our lines and we were free.

  As I came around, I jammed the throttle down and rammed the stern of the lifeboat into the ship. We hit the hull of the Maersk Alabama with a jarring thud.

  “What’s that?” the pirates cried out.

  “Oh, that’s me getting used to this thing,” I said.

  I’d wanted to damage the prop on the lifeboat. I didn’t want to go anywhere with the Somalis. But they build those things for survival and the prop was still pushing water.

  My luck was turning. The wrong way.

  Back home, Andrea was walking around our farmhouse wearing my Polarfleece jacket, because it still smelled like me. She was mad at herself for doing the laundry after I left for Africa, because that jacket was the only thing in the house that still had my scent. “I wouldn’t let go of it,” she said. “I had it on from the moment I heard you were taken. And at night I’d lay it across the bed and my friend Amber and I would each take part of the jacket and sleep.”