U.S. Captain Held by Pirates Is Rescued

United States Navy personnel rescued the captain of an American cargo ship on Sunday by killing three Somali pirates who had been holding him hostage for four days, government officials said.Right before his rescue, Richard Phillips, the 53-year-old captain of the Maersk Alabama, was being held in a 18-foot lifeboat in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Somalia. The pirates were armed with AK-47s and small-caliber pistols, said Vice Admiral William E. Gortney, who spoke from Bahrain to reporters in Washington.Just after dark on Sunday, snipers on the U.S.S. Bainbridge saw that one of the pirates was pointing an automatic rifle at Captain Phillips, and that the captors’ heads and shoulders were exposed from the capsule-like lifeboat.



President Obama had previously authorized the use of force if the commander on the scene believed the captain’s life was in danger, so they fired, Admiral Gortney said. The lifeboat was about 100 feet from the Bainbridge when the shots were fired, shortly after 7 p.m. Somalia time (seven hours ahead of Eastern time). Asked where Captain Phillips was at the time the shots were fired, Admiral Gortney said he was not sure but that he had to be less than 18 feet away, the length of the lifeboat.While it was not clear whether he had jumped into the water, Captain Phillips was pulled out of sea and transported to the Bainbridge, where sailors delivered him a note from his wife, Andrea.“Your family is saving a chocolate Easter egg for you,” she wrote, according to Vice Admiral Gortney. “Unless your son eats it first.”According to John Reinhart, the Maersk Line president and chief executive, Mr. Phillips told him by telephone: “I’m just the byline. The real heroes are the Navy, the Seals, those who have brought me home.” A Navy photograph showed Mr. Phillips shaking hands with the commanding officer of the Bainbridge.American officials acknowledged that the deadly ending of this incident could lead to more confrontations with Somali pirates, who are currently holding more than 200 hostages.“This could escalate violence in this part of the world,” Vice Admiral Gortney said.Only three of the original four captors were in the lifeboat when Mr. Phillips was rescued.Admiral Gortney said that a small Navy vessel had made multiple trips back and forth between the Bainbridge and the lifeboat, carrying food and water to Captain Phillips and the pirates and delivering clean clothes to the captain.On Saturday night, the Navy fired warning shots at the lifeboat, followed by a brief exchange of fire, the official said. Hours afterward, the one pirate who was reportedly injured boarded the supply boat and surrendered to Navy personnel.Around the same time, the Navy managed to attach a line to the lifeboat and began towing it away from shore. Mr. Phillips was being held in a covered part at the back of the lifeboat, the official said, and one pirate typically stayed with him under cover. The lifeboat had gotten as close as 20 miles to shore, drifting after running out of fuel, off Gara’ad, Somalia.In Somalia, Abdirahman Muhammad Faroole, president of the Puntland region, where some of the pirates were thought to be from, said that on Sunday afternoon, American officials whom he’d been talking to throughout the crisis abruptly told him to stop pursuing negotiations with tribal elders affiliated with the pirates. Mr. Faroole was told the Americans “had another action,” and said it was no longer necessary for him to work with the elders, he said.The Justice Department will be reviewing evidence to decide whether charges will be brought against the surviving pirate.In Underhill, Vt., Captain Phillips’s hometown, Alison McColl, a Maersk official, was preparing to a statement from a family when a car pulled up to the house and three youngsters jumped out and ran into the house in jubilation.The pirates — allegedly demanding $2 million in ransom — seized Mr. Phillips on Wednesday and escaped the cargo ship in a motorized lifeboat.A standoff between the pirates and the United States Navy then ensued until Saturday when negotiations between American officials and the pirates broke down, according to Somali officials, after the Americans insisted that the pirates be arrested and a group of elders representing the pirates refused.The negotiations broke down hours after the pirates fired on a small United States Navy vessel that had tried to approach the lifeboat not long after sunrise Saturday in the Indian Ocean.The Maersk Alabama, a 17,000-ton cargo vessel, pulled into port at 8:30 Saturday evening in Mombasa, Kenya, with its 19 remaining American crew members.“The crew was really challenged with the order to leave Richard behind. But as a mariners they took the orders to preserve the ship,” said Mr. Reinhart, President of Maersk.When the crew members heard that their captain had been freed, they placed an American flag over the rail of the top of the ship. They whistled and pumped their fists in the air, The Associated Press reported.More than 250 hostages are being held by various Somalian pirate groups, including the 16 crew members of an Italian tugboat captured on Saturday.One pirate named Ali, in Galkaiyo, Somalia, said the American Navy rescue won’t discourage other Somali pirate groups at all.“As long as there is no just government in Somalia, we will still be the coast guard,” he said, adding: “If we get an American, we will take revenge.”