Captain Phillips and the Maersk Alabama rescue

A merchant captain is rarely rescued from the Indian-Ocean lifeboat-hostage-situation by the three-Navy-SEAL-sniper single-shot kill-pattern from the aft-fantail of a US Navy destroyer at sunset on the fourth-day-of-the-Easter-week. Richard Phillips had been the Master of the Maersk-Alabama on the routine Mombasa-to-Mombasa container-trade-route for approximately eighteen months before the Wednesday morning hijacking-and-boarding of the eighth of April 2009.

THE UNDERHILL VERMONT BOY

Richard Phillips was born at Boston in Massachusetts on the fifteenth of May 1955, fourth of the seven children of John Phillips, an Irish-American Boston-area pharmacist, and Virginia Stack. The family moved to the Winchester suburb of Boston in his early years on the Boston-area middle-class-residential typical-1960s-suburban relocation, and he was raised in the Winchester suburban environment. He was schooled at the Winchester High School to the 1973 graduation, took the place at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy at Buzzards Bay in the 1973-September-class on the Merchant-Marine officer-cadet four-year programme.

He graduated from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in 1979 with the Third-Mate's-Merchant-Marine United-States-Coast-Guard license, took the junior-Third-Mate Merchant-Marine officer-position on the various American-flag merchant-cargo-shipping companies across the 1979-to-1990 junior-officer-Mate-promotion-career, and on the 1990 Master-Mariner-license promotion was promoted to the Master-of-Ship status. He held the Master-positions on the American-Merchant-Marine container-ship-and-bulk-carrier roster across the 1990-to-2008 period, joined the Maersk-Line American-flag-fleet on the 1990 Maersk-Line American-flag officer-rotation arrangement, and took the Maersk-Alabama Master-Mariner-position on the 2007-routine Master-Mariner fleet-rotation assignment.

THE MAERSK ALABAMA

The MV Maersk Alabama was the 17,000-TEU American-flag container-ship on the Maersk-Line Mombasa-to-Mombasa Kenya-to-East-Africa container-trade-route. The route ran from the Mombasa port on the East-African coast through the Indian-Ocean operating-area to the Salalah Oman or the Djibouti-port-of-call, with the Maersk-Alabama serving the East-African-and-Horn-of-Africa container-cargo-trade with the mixed food-aid-and-commercial-cargo manifest. The Maersk-Alabama was the American-flag American-officered American-crewed Maersk-Line American-flag-fleet vessel; the routine Maersk-Alabama Master-Mariner-rotation brought Phillips to the Maersk-Alabama in 2007 on the eighteen-month Master-Mariner-rotation.

THE EIGHTH OF APRIL

On the morning of Wednesday the eighth of April 2009, on the Indian-Ocean operating-area approximately 235 nautical miles east of the Eyl Somali coastal-port, the Maersk-Alabama was attacked by the four-Somali-pirate skiff-attack at the approximately 7:30 AM Indian-Ocean-time. The Somali-pirate-skiff was the standard small twenty-foot-open-deck Somali-pirate-attack-skiff with the standard-Somali-pirate four-man-attack-crew armed with the AK-47-and-RPG standard-Somali-pirate-armament. The pirate-skiff approached the Maersk-Alabama from the port-quarter, boarded the Maersk-Alabama at the port-side-rail-amidships at approximately 7:40 AM, and took the Maersk-Alabama under the Somali-pirate control by approximately 7:50 AM.

The Maersk-Alabama crew of twenty (Phillips as Master, the second-Mate Shane Murphy as the Senior Officer-of-the-Watch, the Chief-Engineer Mike Perry, the other-Mate-and-Engineering-officer-and-Able-Seaman crew complement) had been pre-trained on the American-Merchant-Marine anti-piracy-defence-procedures, took up the pre-prepared anti-piracy-defence-position in the engine-room-and-secure-stations across the Maersk-Alabama compartments, and refused the standard pirate-hostage-demands. The Chief-Engineer Mike Perry led the engine-room-crew in disabling the Maersk-Alabama main-engine-electrical-system to prevent the pirates from sailing the Maersk-Alabama to the Somali-coast.

After approximately five hours of stand-off between the pirate-boarding-party and the Maersk-Alabama crew, Phillips negotiated the pirate-departure-arrangement: the pirates would take the Maersk-Alabama-lifeboat-number-five and Phillips as a hostage in exchange for releasing the Maersk-Alabama and its crew. The pirates accepted the arrangement, took the twenty-eight-foot-Maersk-Alabama-lifeboat-number-five with the Phillips hostage on board, and sailed the lifeboat away from the Maersk-Alabama at approximately 4 PM of the eighth of April 2009.

THE FIVE-DAY-LIFEBOAT-STANDOFF

The United-States-Navy responded immediately to the Maersk-Alabama hijacking-and-Phillips-hostage-situation. The USS Bainbridge destroyer (commanded by Commander Frank Castellano) was dispatched from the Combined-Task-Force-151 Combined-Maritime-Forces Gulf-of-Aden anti-piracy-patrol-position and arrived at the lifeboat-position on the morning of the ninth of April 2009. The USS Halyburton frigate and the USS Boxer amphibious-assault-ship joined the rescue-coordination-position across the tenth-and-eleventh of April 2009.

The Navy-SEAL-Team-Six Special-Operations-Group was dispatched from the Virginia-Beach Naval-Special-Warfare-Center on the rescue-mission-authorization on the ninth-of-April. The SEAL-Team-Six jump-team parachuted into the Indian-Ocean from the C-17-aircraft on the night of the tenth-of-April, was picked up by the USS Boxer the same night, and was transferred to the USS Bainbridge on the eleventh-of-April rescue-coordination-position.

THE TWELFTH OF APRIL

The rescue-operation occurred on the late-afternoon of the twelfth of April 2009 at approximately 7:19 PM Indian-Ocean-time. The Maersk-Alabama lifeboat had been towed by the USS Bainbridge across the tow-arrangement that had been established earlier in the day; the three-Somali-pirate-captors were visible through the lifeboat-cabin observation-windows from the Bainbridge-aft-fantail position. The three-SEAL-Team-Six snipers fired the three-simultaneous single-shot kill-pattern at approximately 7:19 PM under the Castellano-Bainbridge-Captain authorization on the Presidential-rescue-authorization that President Barack Obama had pre-approved on the eleventh of April 2009.

The three-pirate-captors were killed by the three-SEAL-sniper shots simultaneously; Phillips was extracted unharmed from the lifeboat by the SEAL-Team-Six recovery-team. The fourth-Somali-pirate Abduwali Muse (who had earlier come aboard the Bainbridge for the medical-treatment of an earlier knife-wound) was taken into the American-custody and was subsequently tried-and-convicted at the United-States-District-Court for the Southern District of New York on the twenty-first of May 2009 Federal-piracy charges.

THE STANDING-LEGACY

Phillips was extracted from the Bainbridge to the Diego-Garcia US Naval-base on the thirteenth-of-April 2009 for the medical-evaluation, returned to the United-States on the sixteenth-of-April 2009 to the Underhill, Vermont, family-home, and resumed the Merchant-Marine-Master-Mariner-career on the 2010 American-Merchant-Marine-rotation. He wrote the 2010 memoir A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea (the co-authored memoir with Stephan Talty that was published by the Hachette-Book-Group in April 2010), which became the foundational source for the 2013 Paul Greengrass-directed Sony-Pictures Captain Phillips film starring Tom Hanks in the title-role.

The Captain Phillips film of October 2013 grossed approximately 220 million dollars worldwide on the 55-million-dollar production-budget, won the six-Academy-Award-nominations including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and brought the Phillips-and-Maersk-Alabama story into the international-popular-culture-recognition. The Phillips name in modern American merchant-marine-and-anti-piracy history carries the weight of the Indian-Ocean evening rescue on the twelfth of April 2009.