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.
Richard—
I am aware of what is going on. I am with you all the way. Keeping the faith…I love you with all my heart.
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.
THIRTEEN
Day 1, 1900 Hours
The White House is closely monitoring the apparent hijacking of the U.S.-flagged ship in the Indian Ocean and assessing a course of action to resolve this issue. Our top priority is the personal safety of the crew members onboard.