A Captain's Duty

'It never ends like this...'

Richard Phillips knew of the dangers. He'd said as much in an email to his wife.

And yet 8 April 2009 began as just another ordinary day for the fifty-three year-old captain of the Maersk Alabama, the US-flagged cargo ship carrying food and agricultural materials for the World Food Program. Ordinary that is until - some two hundred miles off the Horn of Africa - Somali pirates, armed with AK47s, attacked and boarded the freighter . . .

But the pirates didn't expect the crew to fight back. And they didn't plan on the captain offering himself as a hostage in place of his ship and crew. And ultimately they didn't bargain on the plain-talking, tough-as-nails officer they took as their prisoner. What followed was a tense five-day stand-off and an escalating battle of wills that would end in a daring and deadly high-seas rescue.

Captain Phillips' astonishing story is of an ordinary man who did what he saw as his duty, and in so doing became a hero.