Under cover of darkness dozens of US Navy Seals parachuted into the Indian
Ocean and made their way in inflatable boats to the USS Bainbridge.
The $800-million US Navy destroyer, armed with guided missiles, was shadowing
a ragtag band of teenage pirates with AK47s holding an American hostage in a
drifting 18ft lifeboat.
It was the ultimate assymetric stand-off, pitting the most powerful navy in
the world against a skiff-load of barefoot Somali brigands.
“It’s almost reminiscent of Black Hawk Down, where you have
high-tech, highly trained units which get into a situation where there is a
low-tech environment but some pretty creative people with a lot of
experience in a war zone,” Jamey Cummings, a former US Navy Seal, said.
“These highly trained Seals are coming in to take out 17-year-old pirates.”
The 20-man crew of the Maersk Alabama said that the 508ft (155m)
container ship, carrying food aid to Mombasa in Kenya, had been harassed by
pirates for a week before the vessel was boarded on Wednesday, April 8, more
than 300 miles (500km) off the Somali coast. Four pirates in a fast-moving
skiff boarded the cargo ship with grappling irons at about 7.15am local time
amid a hail of gun-fire into the air.
The unarmed crew of the Maersk Alabama had been drilled by their
captain on what to do in an attack. While Captain Richard Phillips and three
other sailors met the pirates on the bridge most of the crew hid in
sweltering safe rooms below. The power was cut and all the lights went out.
The attack was the first pirate seizure of a US merchant vessel since the
North African Barbary Wars two centuries ago.
The crew, now home in the US, insist that they never lost control of their
ship. As soon as the pirates boarded, the crew switched control of the ship
from the bridge to the engine room, they said. “The captain said the bridge
has been compromised. Click! I took control down in the engine room,” one
crew member shouted to reporters when the Maersk Alabama docked
eventually in Mombasa.
The pirates planned to demand a ransom of $3 million (£2 million).
A. T. M. “Zahid” Reza, a Bangladeshi-American seaman, persuaded the gang
leader – identified by US officials as Abduhl Wal-i-Musi – to accompany him
to the darkened engine room. “I convinced him. I told him, ‘Trust me. I am
Muslim. You are Muslim. Trust me, Abdul. I am from Bangladesh. You are from
Somalia. So we are brothers’.”
Below deck the pirate was overpowered by Mr Reza and Mike Perry, the chief
engineer. They stabbed him with an ice pick and took him prisoner. “I saw
the pirate lying on the floor and the chief engineer on his back with the
knife. He was having [a] hard time to control him. I jumped over the pirate
and stabbed him, and the chief engineer also stabbed him in the back,” Mr
Reza said. “I was attempting to kill him. [The] chief engineer said, ‘No,
no, no, don’t. We need him alive’.”
The crew bundled their captive into one of the safe rooms, where they began to
negotiate with the other pirates. “At that point, from the mood of the
situation, we felt like we had defeated them,” Shane Murphy, the chief mate,
told ABC News.
The pirate skiff had been sunk, although is was unclear by whom, and Captain
Phillips talked the pirates into retreating in a lifeboat. The 13-hour drama
seemed set to come to a peaceful end when the crew agreed to free their
prisoner so that the pirates could leave. “They couldn’t get off the ship
without our help,” John White, an electrician, said. Captain Phillips went
into the fibreglass lifeboat to show the pirates how it worked. The wounded
pirate was to be winched into the lifeboat and Captain Phillips hauled up.
The captured pirate surprised the crew by jumping into the lifeboat when
Captain Phillips was still in pirate hands. “There was a moment where the
exchange was supposed to go down,” Mr Murphy told ABC. “It kind of slowly
deteriorated. And then, all of a sudden, reality set in. “For me it took a
little while to set in . . . that they got him, he’s not coming back.”
The USS Bainbridge, on pirate patrol 300 miles away at the time of the
attack, arrived on Thursday morning. As it stalked the lifeboat at about
midnight Captain Phillips tried to escape by jumping into the sea and
swimming towards the warship. Before the US Navy could react the pirates
fired shots, leapt in after Captain Phillips and recaptured him. The
incident was reportedly captured on video by a circling US drone.
On Friday night President Obama gave authority to use lethal force to save the
life of Captain Phillips. The next night the Seals arrived.
Each Seal is trained for more than a year at a cost estimated at up to
$500,000. After an initial eight weeks of basic US Navy training, candidates
go through six months of specialised Seal training, including three weeks of
parachute training and the so-called Hell Week – five days of almost nonstop
exercises with only four hours’ sleep. The US Government, which has 2,450
Seals on active duty, will not say where the Seals who joined the USS
Bainbridgeare based. Reports said that they belonged to the elite Naval
Special Warfare Development Group, known as DevGru.
The Seal sharpshooters reportedly had many opportunities to shoot but held
fire because they believed that Captain Phillips was not in imminent danger.
On Sunday morning the pirate wounded by the ice pick asked to come on board
the USS Bainbridge. The surrendering pirate reportedly told
officers that the pirates were ready to kill their captive and demanded a
ransom.
The lifeboat was drifting closer to the hostile Somali coast where the hostage
could have been taken to a stronghold. When the weather deteriorated on
Sunday US Navy negotiators offered to tow the drifting lifeboat to calmer
waters. The USS Bainbridge had attached a 200ft towline but reeled
it in slowly until the lifeboat was only 75ft behind the warship.
As darkness fell at 7.19pm on Sunday the snipers, watching through their
night-vision rifle scopes, saw two pirates poke their heads out of a
lifeboat hatch. The third, visible through a window, pointed his AK47 at
Captain Phillips’ back.
ABC News reported that Captain Phillips had moved to one side of the
lifeboat to relieve himself, giving the sharpshooters clean shots. Commander
Frank Castellano, the captain of the USS Bainbridge, decided that the
American hostage was in imminent danger andgave the order to fire. The
snipers each took a single shot, killing all three pirates immediately,
officials said. “This is something that was not overly complicated,” Mr
Cummings said. “The distance was not that far. A few things made it more
difficult. They were shooting a moving target from a moving platform, and
you need a lot of patience too. On something like this they probably had to
go for head shots . . . And they had to do it simultaneously.”
When the Seals rushed on board the lifeboat they found Captain Phillips
tethered to its inside.
Mr Murphy said that the pirates had many chances to save themselves. “They
were warned. We gave them so many outs, and they got greedy.”
US authorities plan to prosecute the surviving pirate leader in New York.
David Shinn, a former US Ambassador to Ethiopia and a Horn of Africa expert at
George Washington University, said that tough action must be taken against
the pirates, including sinking the mother ships from which the fast pirate
boats are launched. “Somali piracy underscores the asymmetrical nature of
the problem. In this sense, it is much like terrorism,” he said. “The
international community needs to make the pirates pay a higher price for
their criminal activities.”
A week at war
Wednesday April 8
Four Somali pirates hijack US cargo ship Maersk Alabama and capture its
American captain, Richard Phillips.
Sunday April 12
Captain Phillips is rescued after five days on a lifeboat. US snipers aboard
the destroyer USS Bainbridge shoot dead three pirates. A fourth is
captured. After the rescue the pirates vow: “We will seek out the Americans
and if we capture them we will slaughter them”.
Wednesday April 15
Pirates with grenades and automatic weapons try to hijack the US ship Liberty
Sun as revenge. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, outlines a
plan to combat piracy through prosecution and freezing assets.
Thursday April 16
The crew of the Maersk Alabama return home to a hero’s welcome. Captain
Phillips’s journey to Mombasa is delayed when the Bainbridge
is diverted to another pirate attack.
