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A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea Hardcover – April 6, 2010
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--President Barack Obama
It was just another day on the job for fifty-three-year-old Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama, the United States-flagged cargo ship which was carrying, among other things, food and agricultural materials for the World Food Program. That all changed when armed Somali pirates boarded the ship. The pirates didn't expect the crew to fight back, nor did they expect Captain Phillips to offer himself as hostage in exchange for the safety of his crew. Thus began the tense five-day stand-off, which ended in a daring high-seas rescue when U.S. Navy SEALs opened fire and picked off three of the captors.
"It never ends like this," Captain Phillips said.
And he's right.
A Captain's Duty tells the life-and-death drama of the Vermont native who was held captive on a tiny lifeboat off Somalia's anarchic, gun-plagued shores. A story of adventure and courage, it provides the intimate details of this high-seas hostage-taking--the unbearable heat, the death threats, the mock executions, and the escape attempt. When the pirates boarded his ship, Captain Phillips put his experience into action, doing everything he could to safeguard his crew. And when he was held captive by the pirates, he marshaled all his resources to ensure his own survival, withstanding intense physical hardship and an escalating battle of wills with the pirates. This was it: the moment where training meets instinct and where character is everything. Richard Phillips was ready.
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHyperion
- Publication dateApril 6, 2010
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions6 x 1 x 8.75 inches
- ISBN-101401323804
- ISBN-13978-1401323806
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About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A CAPTAIN'S DUTY
Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at SeaBy RICHARD PHILLIPS Stephan TaltyHYPERION
Copyright © 2010 Richard PhillipsAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4013-2380-6
Contents
Acknowledgments..................................ixIntroduction.....................................1ONE -10 Days....................................9TWO -8 Days.....................................29THREE -7 Days...................................47FOUR -6 Days....................................63FIVE -3 Days....................................74SIX -2 Days.....................................84SEVEN -1 Day....................................98EIGHT Day 1, 0600 Hours.........................105NINE Day 1, 0735 Hours..........................115TEN Day 1, 0900 Hours...........................127ELEVEN Day 1, 1100 Hours........................146TWELVE Day 1, 1530 Hours........................160THIRTEEN Day 1, 1900 Hours......................167FOURTEEN Day 3, 0200 Hours......................199FIFTEEN Day 3, 1800 Hours.......................217SIXTEEN Day 3, 1900 Hours.......................231SEVENTEEN Day 5, 0300 Hours.....................252EIGHTEEN Day 5, 1945 Hours......................267NINETEEN.........................................277Chapter One
-10 DaysPIRACY FIGURES UP 20 PERCENT IN FIRST QUARTER OF 2009: A total of 36 vessels were boarded and one vessel hijacked. Seven crew members were taken hostage, six kidnapped, three killed and one missing-presumed dead. In the majority of incidents, the attackers were heavily armed with guns or knives. The use and threat of violence against crew members remains unacceptably high.... Waters around Somalia continue to be notorious for hijacking of vessels and the abduction of crew for ransom.
-ICC International Maritime Bureau Piracy Report, First Quarter, 2009
Ten days before, I'd been enjoying my last meal stateside with my wife, Andrea, in one of the most beautiful towns in Vermont. All you see from the front door of my converted farmhouse are rolling green hills, munching cows, and more rolling hills. Underhill is the kind of Vermont town where young farmers propose to their local sweethearts by spray-painting RACHEL, WILL YOU MARRY ME? on bales of hay. It's a place where you can walk for three minutes and be lost in a forest so deep and thick and silent you'd think you're going to trip over Daniel Boone. We have two general stores and one Catholic church, St. Thomas, and the occasional tourist up from Manhattan. It's as different from the ocean as the other side of the moon is, and I love that. It's like I get to live two completely different lives.
As a merchant mariner, I often work three months on and three months off. When I come home, I forget about the sea. I'm 100 percent into being a dad and husband. When our kids, Dan and Mariah, were young, from the moment they got up to the minute they went to bed, I'd take care of them. Neighbors and friends would ask me to babysit, so I'd have five or six kids in tow. I'd make dinner: French toast by candlelight, my specialty. I'd do Rich's Homework Club. I'd take the kids on class trips. Whatever I do, work or home life, I do with everything I have.
When I leave my family, it's for a long time. You need to do something special for them before you ship out, because it might be the last time you see them. When he was growing up, my son, Dan, would goad me, "Oh, I don't have a dad. He's never home. Guess he doesn't love me." We'd laugh about it-Dan is exactly like I was when I was nineteen: a smart aleck who will find your weakness and hammer it home until you give in and laugh. But what he said about my never being there would come back to haunt me. Because there's a kernel of truth there. My daughter, Mariah, and Dan would see me every day for three months and then I would be gone to some far-flung corner of the world. It didn't matter to them that there were other merchant mariners who stayed onboard even longer than I did, that I knew one guy, a radio operator, who was aboard one ship for two years straight.
As a sailor, you have to put your real life on your kitchen shelf and pick up your merchant marine life. Because on the job, you barely have a personal life. You're on call twenty-four hours a day to do whatever the ship needs. You eat and sleep and work and that's pretty much it. It's like you've died and gone to sea. Then you come back and take your real life off the shelf and start living it again.
You develop rituals to get through the transition from land to sea. Sailors have a phrase, "crossing the bar," which means leaving harbor for the unknown on the oceans (it also can refer to the death of a sailor), and you have to get yourself mentally prepared to go across. It's a stressful time when fears start creeping into the minds of your loved ones. It was probably the dangers of my job that were on Andrea's mind that cold March-pirates, rogue waves, desperate people in third-world ports. All the while, I'd be thinking like a captain, running through a checklist with a thousand things on it: What repairs do I need to see to? Are the guys on my crew dependable? I used to start doing this a month before I left, which would drive Andrea around the bend. Now, after thirty years at sea, I wait until I hit the deck of my ship.
Andrea and I have a tradition when I'm getting ready to leave. First, we argue. About nothing at all. In the weeks leading up to my leaving, Andrea and I always have arguments about little things, about the car or the weather or her hitting her head on the old ship's bell that hangs near the clothesline in our backyard. She must have smacked it three or four times while putting up fresh laundry to dry, and she always comes in and yells at me to take it down. (It's still up there, too-sentimental value.) But in those weeks before a job, we get on each other's nerves, which is nothing more than her being anxious about my leaving and me being anxious about leaving her.
* * *
Andrea is an emergency room nurse at a hospital in Burlington and she's a fierce, opinionated, loving Italian girl from Vermont. I love her to death. We'd met in a Boston dive bar, the Cask 'n Flagon, down near Kenmore Square, when she was in nursing school and I'd been around the world a few times already as a young sailor. I noticed this cute frizzy-haired brunette girl sitting at the bar, and I just had to talk to her. Andrea was talking with the bartender, since they'd just discovered they had mutual friends. Then, as she tells it, this tall guy with a beard appeared out of nowhere and sat down next to her.
"You have a problem," I said.
Andrea thought, Well, he's cute enough. I'll play along.
"What's that?" she said.
"Being the best-looking woman in every room you walk into."
"Thanks," she said. "There are three women in here. Not a huge compliment."
I laughed and stuck out my hand.
"I'm Rich," I said. "As in 'filthy.'" That was one of my better lines in the early eighties.
Andrea cracked up. Then she let me buy her a drink.
Years later, after we were married, Andrea told me that she thought I was funny and easy to talk to. Like most people's, her only knowledge of the merchant marine came from Humphrey Bogart movies. I guess that's why she let me tell her so many stories. "You made it sound intriguing," she said.
After we met, I had to ship out and Andrea didn't hear from me again for months. She moved to a new apartment after her first year at nursing school. Then one night at about 1 a.m., there was a rap on her door. When she opened it, there I was, smiling like I'd won the lottery. She was floored. She figured I must have walked all over Boston, trying to find her new address. She wasn't far off.
Andrea was twenty-five and very focused on school. Nursing was going to be her life. I was on her radar, but only a blip on the edge of the screen. I would ship out and she would get postcards and then letters from these ports all over the world. Then I'd come back to Boston and take her out to dinner and the movies and pick her and her friends up at seven a.m. the next morning and drive them to their first classes. All the while, I'd have a new batch of stories to tell her about storms off Cape Hatteras or typhoons or good or crazy shipmates.
To me, it was just life on the seas. But she loved getting the postcards and the sudden reunions. "It was romantic," Andrea says to this day. "It really was."
* * *
The night before I shipped out for the Maersk Alabama, Andrea and I jumped in our car and went to our favorite restaurant, a place called Euro, in the nearby town of Essex. Andrea had the shrimp scampi and I had the seafood medley and we drank a bottle of red wine we brought with us. It's cheaper that way. I'm three quarters Irish and one quarter Yankee, but that one quarter controls the money. I've been known to be tight with a dollar, and I don't mind saying so.
The next day, March 28, Andrea dropped me at the airport, like she always did. There was nothing out of the ordinary in those last hours together. "Everything is going to be fine," I said. "I'm sure you're going to get a blizzard as soon as I leave, so just think of me lounging on deck in the hot sun." I love snow. There's nothing I like more than looking out my back window at the fields and trees covered in white. She laughed. "See you in June," she said and gave me a kiss. She usually stays until my flight leaves; that's a tradition that started when Mariah and Dan were young. They would stand at the window watching my flight take off and wave at their daddy, just milking that last moment of togetherness for everything it was worth. But the kids were in college now and Andrea was on her way to work and she couldn't wait. It was the first time that ever happened. I thought about that later.
* * *
I love the sea and being a merchant mariner, but you meet a lot of oddballs on ships. I think a lot of it has to do with leaving people behind for so long. It can mess up your head. Marriages break up. Girlfriends find new guys. Sailors get "Dear John" e-mails in the middle of the night on some lonely stretch of water miles from anywhere. Sometimes, a crew member will disappear, just jump overboard in the middle of the ocean, never to be found. A lot of it has to do with the strain that comes from being away from loved ones.
Merchant mariners always talk about Jodie. Jodie's the guy who's at home screwing your wife while you're out on a ship. He's eating your food, driving your car, chugging your beer. Jodie's going to be sitting on your couch when you arrive home, asking, "Who are you?" When a guy calls his wife and she doesn't answer, we tell him, "She's out with Jodie." As much as we joke about it, Jodie is all too real. Guys get home and their apartment is cleaned out, their bank balance reads zero, and their fiance is gone without leaving a note. It happens to some sailors over and over again. Every time I heard about Jodie it made me feel more thankful that I had Andrea at home. Jodie never visited my house.
But I'm not going to lie, some sailors just start out crazy-especially the cooks. I'm convinced there are very few normal, well-adjusted cooks in the entire U.S. Merchant Marine. Not one, except for my brother-in-law, Dave. But you do have your share of eccentrics among the rest of the crew, too. I've served under an old-salt captain named Port-and-Starboard Peterson who in fog as thick as pea soup would refuse to use radar because it would hypnotize you into crashing into another ship. The radar was evil, you see. One guy wore half a mustache for an entire three-month trip. Another demanded to be called Polar Bear when we sailed toward the North Pole and Penguin when we went toward the South Pole. This guy collected so many T-shirts from the different ports that you could barely push open the door to his quarters. I knew another seaman who showed up at the boat wearing a wolf-skin coat with the head still attached. Sailors are a breed apart, that's for sure.
It's been that way forever. The merchant marine is the first of the nation's services. We were founded in 1775, before the army and the navy. In all our wars, including World War II, guys who just couldn't live with the navy's regulations ended up onboard cargo ships. They didn't see the point of having a crease in their dungarees or saluting every officer onboard; they just weren't made that way. It's no accident that many of the Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were former seamen. The need to wander and the need to rebel go hand in hand. We're a bunch of misfits and renegades and damn good seamen.
When I'm taking ships from port to port, books on the history of the merchant marine or World War II are always piled by my bunk. We were the first to die in World War II-seventeen minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese sub strafed the lumber hauler SS Cynthia Olson and sank it, over 1,000 miles north of Honolulu. Thirty-three sailors jumped into lifeboats but were never seen again, because all hell was breaking loose on navy ships a thousand miles away. And the merchant marine suffered more casualties than any other service in World War II. One in every twenty-six sailors died while doing his duty. Crewmen torpedoed along the Atlantic coast drowned in engine oil while sunbathers watched from the shore. Men in the North Atlantic froze solid to the floors of their lifeboats after their tankers went down. Enormous five-hundred-foot ships carrying ammunition and dynamite to the front lines were torpedoed, blowing up in explosions so violent they never found a trace of the tons of metal or the hundreds of men aboard. They just disappeared into thin air. Which is fitting, really. The merchant marine has always been the invisible service, the guys who brought the tanks to Normandy, the bullets to Okinawa, but no one ever remembers us. What General Douglas MacArthur said was true: "They brought us our lifeblood and paid for it with their own." But when the boys from the cargo ships went home, there were no ticker-tape parades, no G.I. Bill, nothing like that. They're still trying to get recognition so they can live out their lives with dignity. There's a bill before Congress that will guarantee them standing as World War II veterans and pay them a small stipend, but it's taking so long to get through the political process that most of the guys will be dead before it's passed. That's a shame.
When I was coming up in the service, I met guys who'd served in World War II and had ships shot out from beneath them. And I remember what one guy told me: "I was in the merchant marine when the war broke out and I saw ships going down left and right. I got so scared I joined the navy." He was just playing the odds. Being a merchant mariner was a good way to meet your maker in those days.
A lot of us have a chip on our shoulder. We're patriots. We have a proud tradition. We're rugged individualists with a few mixed nuts thrown in to keep it interesting.
But we never make the headlines.
* * *
On that trip to the Maersk Alabama, I had one of those history books packed in my carry-on luggage, but I sat on the plane thinking about what I had to do once I got aboard. My flight left at 3 p.m. I was headed to Salalah, Oman, on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula, where the ship was loading up its cargo holds. I've flown as long as forty-two hours to get to a ship, and this time the journey was nothing unusual: Burlington to Washington, D.C., D.C. to Zurich, Zurich to Muscat, Oman, where I crashed at a hotel for ten hours. The next morning, I headed straight back to the airport for the flight to Salalah. I left Vermont on March 28 and arrived at my destination on the thirtieth. Wherever there's work as a merchant mariner, you go. Joining me on the trip was Shane, my chief mate and an able-bodied seaman, who was also headed to the Maersk Alabama.
I rolled out of bed on March 30, my brain cloudy from jet lag, and jumped in a car that took me to my ship. The Maersk Alabama was sitting at the dockside, its two cranes swinging containers onto the deck, when I walked up the gangway, boarded the ship, and went up to my office to meet the relieving captain, who debriefed me on what was going on. The captain left and I dumped my gear in my quarters, which were connected to an office, one floor below the bridge on the starboard side. To get from my room to the ship's bridge, all I would have to do is walk down the hallway to the center door. Opening it, I'd be in the chimney, or central ladder way. One flight up and I'd be on the bridge, the command center for the whole ship.
The house was what we call the seven-story superstructure at the stern (or rear) of the ship. A small condolike structure, it contained our living quarters, our mess hall, and our hospital. The top level was the bridge, where large windows ran from the ceiling to about waist-high and were met by a metal wainscoting that dropped to a special antifatigue rubber floor. (Watches are kept on the bridge, where a mate and an AB, or able-bodied seaman, are constantly scanning the horizon, so you want them to stay alert.) It looked like a greenhouse in there, with views for miles in every direction. In the middle of the bridge was the conning station-that's where we steer the ship from-and a flat electronic console filled with navigation aids. That's where you'd find the radar. Radar doesn't look like the cathode tube setup you see in Humphrey Bogart movies. These days it looks more like a TV, with ships still appearing as a small blip, but now with data streaming down the right side of the screen: the speed of any vessels, CPA (closest point of approach, which tells you the point at which you're going to intersect with that approaching ship), and time to CPA. On the port side stood a chart table, where the second mate-the office man on a ship-does his work. There was a GMDSS, or Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, which gave us continuous weather updates, a small electronic station, which replaced the traditional radio operator, and a computer.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A CAPTAIN'S DUTYby RICHARD PHILLIPS Stephan Talty Copyright © 2010 by Richard Phillips. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Hyperion; 1st edition (April 6, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1401323804
- ISBN-13 : 978-1401323806
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Item Weight : 15.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 6 x 1 x 8.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #967,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #218 in Aviation & Nautical Biographies
- #4,327 in Traveler & Explorer Biographies
- #26,966 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Stephan Talty is the NY Times bestselling author of six acclaimed nonfiction books, as well as two crime novels, "Black Irish" and "Hangman," set in his hometown of Buffalo. He's written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Playboy, the Chicago Review and many others. Talty's ebook, "The Secret Agent," was a #1 Amazon Kindle bestseller in nonfiction.
Talty lives outside New York City with his wife and two children. You can visit his website at www.stephantalty.com.
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Customers find the plot twists exciting, frightening, and emotional. They also describe the characters as great, cool, and complicated. Readers describe the writing quality as tolerable, clever, and tough. They find the book very interesting and well done. Customers also mention the story as moving, heroic, and genuine. They describe the pacing as fast.
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Customers find the book very interesting, engaging, and rewarding. They say it does an admirable job of giving the minutiae of what happened in a way a movie can't. They also say the book is exciting, action-packed, and suspenseful.
"...In the meantime, what a great summer read this is--I can't wait to read it a second time...." Read more
"...Still, it was a fine book and I devoured it quickly. It speaks to the readability of the book and the fascinating and dramatic story it tells...." Read more
"I loved this story and so enjoyed reading it...." Read more
"...This is done well, and doesn't slow the narrative down too much, but rather provides pacing and perspective to the story...." Read more
Customers find the story riveting, providing insight into the life of a merchant. They also appreciate the dedication, loyalty, and mental toughness of the character. Readers also mention that the book does a wonderful job describing his days at the hands of the pirates. They say it's one of the best non-fiction novels they've read in a while, and a fast-paced story.
"...He truly is, as I suspected, genuine and down to earth, he could be your neighbor, your brother, or the guy that coaches the softball team in town...." Read more
"...A wonderful true story told with compassion by the man who lived it." Read more
"...writes with humility and gratefulness, but also an unwavering sense of right and wrong which is encouraging." Read more
"...It's a terrifying true story of survival...." Read more
Customers find the writing quality of the book tolerable, straightforward, honest, and well done. They also mention that the book includes quite a lot of cleverness and tough choices that were made in critical situations.
"...Phillips writes with humility and gratefulness, but also an unwavering sense of right and wrong which is encouraging." Read more
"...Overall this was an easy read, interesting, and a nice piece to add to our understanding of an event that will be included in American history...." Read more
"Written in an engaging style. Book recounts the hijacking of Alabama Maersk and the successful rescue of Capt. Phillips by US Navy SEALS...." Read more
"...The parallel narrative of the events at home is very well done.All in all I liked the book I hope the movie does not disappoint." Read more
Customers find the pacing of the book fast and easy. They also say the explanations are given in depth.
"...First and foremost, it reads very fluidly. It's something of a page turner...." Read more
"...The book itself is easy reading, it is such an interesting career choice and you learn so much about being a Maritime sailor...." Read more
"...And the reason that Phillips succeeds is that the story moves quickly, with appropriate detail, and yet makes a deeper point...." Read more
"...seeing the movie “Captain Phillips” you will have a pleasant, easy read ahead of you...." Read more
Customers find the characters in the book great, noble, and excellently developed. They also describe the book as suspenseful, entertaining, and awesome.
"...Overall this was an easy read, interesting, and a nice piece to add to our understanding of an event that will be included in American history...." Read more
"...The Captain proves to be an honorable and dedicated man - as one would expect a Captain to be...." Read more
".../mission oriented, compassionate, family man, credible, trustworthy, respected,etc., and etc...." Read more
"...saw the film first and I was sitting on the edge of my seat, the actors were great, the only thing I found by reading the book was that so much was..." Read more
Customers find the plot twists in the book interesting, heart-pounding, and tense. They also say the book gives a human connection to the story that was missing.
"...Phillips description of what it was like for his family too was very touching. It is difficult for families when the father has to work away at sea...." Read more
"...The book captures well the tensions, the heat, and the awfulness of the claustrophobic space in the small boat in which he was held captive...." Read more
"...Suspenseful, frightening details on being held hostage, what goes through one's mind about family, life and duty...." Read more
"...This book really gives you the human connection to the story that was missing from the media frenzy. Kudos to Capt...." Read more
Customers find the book provides a great background on the merchant marine and life on a ship. They also say it provides s good prospective from the captain's viewpoint. Customers also say the book is a story of leadership, personal reflection, and strong relationships.
"...The descriptions of the ship activities were good too, and helped me to understand somewhat what it is like to "go shipping" in this day and..." Read more
"...Cap. Phillips set an example of bravery, leadership and serenity to control the critical situation he was living...." Read more
"...It is a great story of leadership, personal reflection, and strong relationships." Read more
"...Lots of detail regarding the Merchant Marine service as well as what his wife was going through during the hostage crisis...." Read more
Customers are mixed about the comprehensibility of the book. Some mention it's very hard to put down, while others say it'd be hard to follow.
"...The book is really interesting and was impossible to put it down." Read more
"...it was a bit too long,the part in the lifeboat was very long and hard to follow, but other than that it was brilliant...." Read more
"I gave this book 5 stars because not only was it well written, easy to follow, easy to get into, and easy to feel their thoughts and fears but it..." Read more
"...This one is a great read. Great price. Great condition. I love the ease of ordering and having it come right to the front door...." Read more
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I had bought this book before the talk but didn't get a chance to read it all the way through. But the next day I sat down and read the entire book and I'm so glad that I had it right there. I was able to use the book to relive parts of the talk and to better understand some of the fine points of his very brave adventure. When you see a movie of an event like this, you have to wonder how much is Hollywood and how much is reality, but after having seen him talk and having read this book, that movie is extremely close to portraying exactly what happened. In the Q&A after the talk, in fact, someone asked him that very question: How much of the movie was invented for drama? His reply was that while certain bits of the timelines were altered in small ways and certain events that happened weren't actually shown (in the movie and news stories there were only three shots fired, for example, but in reality many were fired), most of the movie was a very accurate reflection of actual events.
If that's the truth, and I believe it is, this is one very brave guy. In the face of near certain death, he put his ship's cargo and his crew ahead of his own life--and he figured out a way to outwit the pirates very early on. It was a gamble, but it saved everyone's lives.
I highly recommend both this book and the film. Books like this always have a ghost author involved because, let's face it, he's a sea captain not a writer, but it is his voice that comes through. And I really hope that the writing bug will get ahold of the Captain, because I'd love to hear more about the sea and about his life as a Merchant Marine.
If you get the chance to see Captain Phillips speak, do whatever you have to do to get there. In the meantime, what a great summer read this is--I can't wait to read it a second time. My only regret is that I didn't get an opportunity to ask him to sign my book! Next time.
I recommend the book for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it reads very fluidly. It's something of a page turner. Also, the inherent mystery of those terrible waters off Somalia and the plague that beseeches it is inherently fascinating. I wanted to understand how what we too readily assume to be something of an anachronism - piracy in the modern era - can not only still exist, but indeed thrive. And honestly, it is still a mystery to me that each of these more well funded ships do not have armed security staff. Certainly, if we can entrust armed guards to a corner bank or a jewelery store, why not ships that are sitting ducks?
My only complaint, and it is minor, is that as the book progresses, it tends to shift to what Andrea, Phillips' remarkable wife was going through. Clearly, we understand the emotional gravity of what she faced, and I think it was important to cover this part of the story. However, I think a dedicated chapter near the end would have been more appropriate. The constant interruptions to the unfolding drama in the lifeboat with relatively low drama elements like press intrusion and how she was coping back home, lead me to skim through these parts of the story, simply because they felt like a screeching halt to the book's considerable momentum. I can appreciate the importance of Phillips' family and wife, and I was interested in the matter, but had the author offered a consolidated view of "what went on back home" once the main narrative was over, I suspect I would have been more open and indeed keen to read it thoroughly, rather than seeing it as a glitch in the telling of the central story.
Still, it was a fine book and I devoured it quickly. It speaks to the readability of the book and the fascinating and dramatic story it tells. Highly recommended!
RESPECT!!!
The book itself is easy reading, it is such an interesting career choice and you learn so much about being a Maritime sailor. Add to that the touching relationship with his wife and children and of course the amazing rescue and wonderful job by the Navy Seals makes this a great read. I couldn't put it down, even though I knew the result! I love the part where he says we are all much stronger than we know. Very uplifting.
You did great, Captain Phillips, I'm proud you're one of us and that people like you still exist. Loved the "Irish" tribe thing, too!! Those Irish roots go deep and definitely give us strength when times are tough. Thank you for a wonderful read.
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No he querido ver la película, lo siento.
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