Richard Phillips: A Captain's Duty

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d love a beer.”

The guy nodded. “We can do that.” I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the captain of the Boxer.

He turned away and just as he began to walk off, I called out, “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Think I can get two beers?”

The captain smiled.

“Yeah, you can have two beers.”

The guy left and I stripped off my clothes and got ready for a shower. I was brushing my teeth buck naked when the captain returned, with two sailors hauling a huge cooler. It was full of beer.

“Holy crap,” I said. “How long am I going to be here?”

They laughed at that, and the captain told me I could make a phone call. He also let me know President Obama wanted to talk to me. I finished my shower, jumped into my clothes, grabbed a beer, and followed the captain.

The sailors showed me to my room and I just sat on the bunk taking it all in, drinking my first beer. I’m free, I’m alive, I’m safe. It felt unreal. It seemed like I’d been taken from the living hell of that lifeboat to this clean, calm ship in a split second.

President Obama called. I picked up the phone and there was that familiar baritone voice congratulating me.

“I think you did a great job out there,” he said.

“Well, all the credit goes to the military,” I told him. “I can’t thank them enough. And I want to thank you for the part you played.” And I meant it. I knew the order for the rescue had to go all the way to the top, so in a way I was speaking to the man who’d gotten me out of that hellhole in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

“We’re just glad that you’re safe,” the president said. Then we talked a little basketball—he’s a hardcore Chicago fan and I’m a Boston diehard, so we chatted about how the Bulls matched up against my beloved Celtics. I couldn’t believe I was chatting with the president from a navy ship halfway around the world, and talking about Kevin Garnett’s jump shot.

The next day, the corpsmen asked me what I wanted to do. “I want to look around, see the ocean full around on the horizon,” I said. I still had that feeling of confinement, of being trapped. They brought me up on deck and I just looked at the huge ocean all around me and the claustrophobic feeling started to dissolve. I could see the coast of Somalia and I realized how close we’d actually come to it. But I wouldn’t feel totally free until I got off the water and felt land under my feet in Kenya.

Then I got to meet my rescuers. The SEALs gathered on the Boxer and I went through the entire line, shaking hands and saying thanks. I’d always respected the military, but now I really felt how selfless and duty-driven these guys were. They didn’t want fame or money or recognition. They just wanted me safe and back with my family.

“You guys are the heroes,” I told them. “You’re the titans.” And I believe that. What I did is nothing compared to what the SEALs do every day.

They were happy as hell, too. “Our missions rarely turn out this way,” one of the SEALs told me. “We train for it to go down exactly as it did yesterday.” I saw that I was a kind of good luck token for them, something tangible that had come out of all their years of training.

The leader of the team that had rescued me came to my room. He asked me how I was sleeping.

At first, I didn’t want to tell him what had been happening with me. I was a bit ashamed, I guess. My first night after the rescue, I’d woken up in my quarters around 5 a.m., bawling my eyes out. I hadn’t cried like that since I was a boy.

What am I, a wimp? I’d thought. I’m lucky to be alive and here I am crying like a girl.

I’d kicked myself in the ass and taken a shower. The crying went away, until the next morning, when the exact same thing happened. Wailing and sobbing right out of a deep sleep.

The SEAL leader listened to me, nodding. “You need to talk to our psychiatrist,” he said.

“I’m not really into nut doctors.”

He smiled. “It’s accepted, we all do it. What you went through is a roller coaster of emotions. If you don’t talk about it, it’s going to stay with you.” He wouldn’t take no for an answer, insisting I see the psychiatrist.

Finally I did talk to the SEAL psychiatrist. I dialed him up and he explained to me that being a hostage had placed me between life and death, and when the body is faced with that kind of situation, it releases special chemicals to get you through the crisis. And these hormones were still surging through my body.

“Have you had episodes where you were crying?” he asked.

I was taken aback. “Exactly right.”

“It’s normal,” he said. “Everyone goes through it. So how do you handle it?”

“I yell at myself, tell myself to stop being a wimp, splash water on my face, and get over it.”

“Next time, don’t end it. Just let it run its course.”

I had my doubts. But the next morning, invariably at 0500, I woke up in my bunk crying. I swung my legs out and sat on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands, weeping. And I just let it go. For thirty minutes, tears streamed down my face and I didn’t try to stop them. Waves of sadness and grief washed over me. And I let them. It was the strangest feeling.

And it never came back.

I spent the next four days back on the Bainbridge . I’ve never felt so old in my life. I was surrounded by eighteen-to twenty-four-year-old navy personnel, both men and women, who were highly proficient, eager, and pushing for more. There was a sense of professionalism, duty, and honor that could be felt throughout. But one thing the navy couldn’t hide even if they wanted to: these men and women were dog-tired. I’m used to putting in long hours and I know the signs: coffee breath, bags under the eyes, tired-sounding talk, slow reactions. They’d been up for days, trying to rescue me. I learned later that Captain Frank had seldom left the bridge during the whole ordeal and I could see it in his face. That was dedication.

I went back to my quarters that night. As I was getting ready for bed, I noticed a painting hanging above my bed. It was an old-fashioned portrait and the man looked like an American sailor from the nineteenth century. I asked the captain about it later and he said, “Oh, that’s William Bainbridge.”

I laughed. The old pirate-hunter and Barbary captive was watching over me.

I had the run of the whole ship. I was there for the evening navigation briefing and listened to the men give the tide report for the upcoming docking at Mombasa. I was standing there for every promotion ceremony. I had seconds at the ice-cream social at 2100. I watched as the vessel met a supply ship in the middle of the ocean and brought on food, mail, and other cargo. Perhaps it would have meaning only for a guy who loves the sea and ships, but I felt privileged to see behind the veil of a great navy vessel.

I felt a little guilty. I explained to Captain Frank that I’d become the guy I hated to have on my own ships. The guy who makes it to the mess hall for every meal, sleeps fourteen hours a day, and does absolutely nothing. The useless one. But for once in my life, I accepted the role.

The navy personnel tried to impress upon me the media storm that had broken over my hostage-taking, as did Andrea when I spoke with her. But it never got through to me. The first day on the Boxer, I was sitting in the mess deck when I heard voices I recognized, voices from back home. Startled, I turned around: On the ship’s satellite TV, I saw the faces of my neighbors, my kids, Maersk officials. I turned my back to it. I didn’t want to hear it. A navy pilot said, “Don’t you want to see it?”