![]() Seven crew members were taken hostage, six kidnapped, three killed and one missing - presumed dead. PIRACY FIGURES UP 20 PERCENT IN FIRST QUARTER OF 2009: A total of 36 vessels were boarded and one vessel hijacked. ![]() ![]() In his new memoir, A Captain's Duty, Phillips describes the five-day hostage ordeal that followed - and explains how he felt when the Navy SEALs staged a rescue mission and killed three of his four captors. Though Phillips had regularly trained his crew in drills to handle an attack on the Maersk - manning the high-pressured fire hoses and flares, alerting the proper maritime transportation organizations and moving into a safe room - he says the pirates on April 8 were able to avoid the crew's evasive maneuvering. Phillips had been at the helm of the Maersk Alabama, a commercial cargo ship en route to Kenya, when the ship was attacked by four pirates in a tiny speedboat. One of those successful hijackings took place in April, when an American ship's captain named Richard Phillips was held hostage for several days on a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean. According to the Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau, over 200 vessels were attacked by pirates in 2009, with 47 attacks resulting in successful hijackings. These pirates, who carry AK-47s and travel in fast speedboats, target unarmed cargo ships traveling in the Gulf of Aden. A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Seaįor several years, Somali pirates have terrorized the seas around the eastern Horn of Africa.
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