A Captain's Duty (14 page)

Tall Guy came up next to me and looked at the panel on the emergency generator. He reached up and started flipping
switches up and down. He probably thought he could get the damn ship running if he hit the right combination.

I yelled over to him. “Can you please leave those alone?”

He laughed and walked away. I went back to my fueling.

I’d chosen the buckets carefully. They were the dirtiest ones on that part of the ship, filled with grease and chemicals and the backwash that accumulates when you run a container ship. If that didn’t gum up the MOB’s engine, nothing would.

The buckets filled up quickly. The pirates helped me ferry them over to the deck near the MOB. Once we had the vessel in the water, we’d lower them down. With that much fuel, they could make it anywhere on the Somali coast.

As I was ferrying the buckets over, I passed the rope scuttle hatch sticking three feet above the deck. That particular hatch led down to the aft line locker, a little area where we kept all the rope for the
Maersk Alabama
. And the hatch was standing wide open, with a line running down into it. There’s only one reason that hatch would be open: the crew must have been down in the scuttle, lying on the ropes, trying to catch a breeze and escape the infernal heat of the ship.

I was hoping the pirates wouldn’t notice. The hatch door had been shut the first time we passed it. Now it was gaping open. But, sure enough, instead of walking by they stopped right in front of it. And after a few seconds of confusion, Tall Guy and Musso leaned over and peered into the darkness.

I brought my radio up. “Guys, they see that hatch. Get away from it now. The pirates are right above you.”

Musso brought out his flashlight and pointed it down. I held my breath. If they found the crew now, the deal was off.

Tall Guy unslung the AK-47 from his shoulder and pointed
it down the scuttle. They must have heard the guys moving around down there.
Goddamn it
, I thought.
It’s over.

He pulled the gun back and handed it to Musso. Tall Guy ducked down and put his head into the hatch and tried to see if he could wriggle through the opening. They were going to go down there and hunt my men down. But not even he was skinny enough to get his shoulders through the hatch.

“Come on,” I called to Musso from about fifteen feet away. “Do you want this fuel or not? I need some help here or we’ll never get going.”

Musso looked back at Tall Guy, who was wrenching his shoulders through the hatch opening.

“Get out of there,” I whispered fiercely into the radio. “Pirates coming down.”

Musso tapped Tall Guy on the side and said something in Somali. Tall Guy pulled his head out of the hatch and looked over at me.

“Grab those two buckets,” I called out. “Quit fucking around already. Do you want to leave the ship or not?”

Tall Guy took another look down the hatch, peering with his flashlight darting up and down. Then he turned and started walking toward me.

I felt relief wash over me.

I got in the MOB. The pirates wanted me to teach them how to start and kill the engine. I was more than happy to do it.

Tall Guy and Musso were really warming up to the idea of sailing away. “We’ll just get off your boat,” Musso said to me, cracking a smile. “We’ll be done here.” Thirty thousand dollars wouldn’t buy them a Mercedes SUV and a mansion, but it
was a hell of a lot more than most Somalis would see in a lifetime of working. Not bad for a day’s banditry. As far as I was concerned, they were welcome to it. It was a small price to pay for getting my ship and my crew back.

By now, it was late in the afternoon. I was rushing to get the Somalis off the
Maersk Alabama
before nightfall. I was winching the MOB off its cradle, but the progress was painfully slow.

“Where are the engineers?” Musso said. “Pains in the asses, those guys.”

“I hear you,” I said. I smiled to myself. I’d managed to create a little bit of reverse Stockholm syndrome with the Somalis. Tall Guy and Musso and myself were united in our disgust at the incompetence of my crew.
Shit,
they must have thought,
how does he sail with these idiots?
The two tall Somalis were competent sailors, I would find out later, and the Leader was as smart as they came. But I suspected they hadn’t stormed enough ships to learn the basics of hostage-taking. Believing that the captain couldn’t get his men on deck was an amateurs’ mistake.

With $30,000 in their hands, the two pirates were satisfied. Still, Shane’s little trick of faking a distress call to the navy had clearly had its effect. They were continually sweeping the horizon for any sign of a destroyer. But their mood had improved.

As had mine. This nightmare was almost over. I wouldn’t even allow myself to think we were nearly free. Too much Irish superstition, maybe—or my dad’s insistence on finishing the job. But that threat of spending the rest of my life in a black hole in bandit country seemed further and further away.

“We can do this,” Musso said to me. “But now we need our guy.”

“You can’t get your guy until we’re in the water,” I shot back. No way was I doing an exchange until these guys were off my ship.

“Okay, okay.”

My radio was beeping but it still had a little juice left. I walked over to the fuel buckets and pretended to fuss with one of them. Meanwhile, I called the chief engineer on the radio.

“Chief, these guys are ready to get into the MOB. We’ll make the exchange once we’re in the water.”

“Got it.”

“As soon as they’re off the ship, get it ready to go. I want you to get out of here ASAP. When you see your chance, go. Don’t worry about me.”

There was no false bravado here. Victory to me was separating my men and my ship from these bandits. The rest I’d worry about later.

Now I saw Young Guy climbing down the ladders. I was ecstatic. That meant one seaman was up on the bridge, completely unguarded.

“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.

T
hings 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 name?”

“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.

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.