Book info

• Title A Captain's Duty
• Author Richard Phillips
• Year 2010
• Genre Memoir

An extraordinary true story of piracy, heroism and survival on the high seas... 8th April 2009 was just an ordinary day for 53 -year-old Richard Phillips, captain of the United States-registered cargo vessel, the Maersk Alabama, as it headed towards the port of Mombasa. Ordinary that is until, two hundred or so miles off the east coast of Africa, armed Somali pirates attacked and boarded the freighter as it headed towards the port of Mombasa. It was the first time an American cargo ship had been hijacked in over two-hundred years. What the pirates didn’t expect was that the crew would fight back, nor did they expect Captain Phillips to offer himself as a hostage in exchange for the safety of his crew. And so began a nail-bitingly tense five-day stand-off, which ended in a daring high-seas rescue by U.S. Navy SEALs. In A Captain's Duty, Richard Phillips tells his own extraordinary story - that of an ordinary man who did what he saw as his duty and in so doing became a hero. It is a thrilling true tale of adventure and courage in the face of deprivation, death threats and mock executions and also a compulsively readable first-hand account of the terrors of high-seas hostage-taking.

Thoughts

I must have picked this up at some point after seeing the film version starring Tom Hanks but this has been on my to read list for so long I almost forgot it was there. I finally got round to it and it’s a relatively quick read formatted nicely and well written. It pulls on the emotions but also keeps a level head detailing a really terrifying situation - the lead up, the actual pirate activity, and the aftermath.

Rating: 4 / 5