A very lucky hero is Captain Richard Phillips, 53, freed from Somali pirates in April 2009.
He is lucky because his story might very well have turned out less well, and he surely is heroic in that he offered himself as hostage to save his 19-man crew on board the container ship Maersk Alabama, which had been boarded by four Somali pirates.
Earlier in his adulthood, Phillips was a cabbie in Boston. Then he attended and in 1979 graduated from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
Capt. Pillips was held hostage by three of the pirates in a small craft secured by a line to the USS Bainbridge, which had come to the rescue. (One of the pirates had surrendered by this time.) At one point during his long ordeal, Phillips jumped from the 28-foot lifeboat and tried to swim to safety, but was re-captured.
Negotiations were making little headway, and three Navy SEAL snipers aboard thee Bainbridge fired simultaneously after they observed a pirate aiming his AK-47 at the Captain's back. All three pirates were killed. The Maersk Alabama then continued its voyage to Kenya.
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