![]() ![]() Much like the Boy Scouts, my story is about being prepared," Phillips said. ![]() On the first day of their ordeal, three boats were following the 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama, but "we relied on our procedures and our planning. On Wednesday, Phillips said he always told his crews that it was a matter of "when," not "if." "There's always been pirates, and I believe there always will be," he said. It's what I call the second-oldest profession we come into contact with frequently as a merchant marine," said Philips, a sturdily-built man sporting salt and pepper hair and the beard recognizable from media coverage of his capture and rescue in 2009 and from Tom Hanks' portrayal of Phillips in the 2013 movie. "Piracy has always been a part of the sea. Phillips said he learned immediately that piracy and the possibility of hijackings are a constant threat. "As soon as I did that, I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life," said Phillips, who now lives as a "retired sailor" in Underhill, Vermont, where he's made his home the last 30 years. Phillips' mother had connections that helped him get into Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where he learned his trade.Īnd Phillips' first summer at sea convinced him. In an interview prior to Wednesday's luncheon, the Winchester, Massachusetts, native Phillips said he had never really set his sights on a career on the sea and was a high school graduate with no college plans working as a cab driver when a fare he picked up at Boston Logan International Airport told him about his life as a merchant sailor. Phillips was introduced after Friends of Scouting campaign chairman Jeff DeLoach, president of the Times Free Press, and Rich Mozingo, the friends luncheon chairman and president and general manager of the Chattanooga Lookouts, talked about the impact scouting made on them and their families, going back to their own childhood memories and giving accounts of how the experience carried through into their families' lives. Phillips, 63, was the captain of the MV Maersk Alabama in the spring of 2009 when four Somali pirates in an open skiff in the Indian Ocean pursued and boarded the cargo ship he was sailing, beginning a five-day ordeal that would become the subject of Phillips' own book, "A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs and Dangerous Days at Sea," and the basis for the 2013 film "Captain Phillips," starring Tom Hanks. ![]() His boyhood experience as first a Cub Scout and later as a Boy Scout for about three years taught Phillips to be prepared, a motto that would serve him well in his adulthood, Phillips said Wednesday, prior to speaking to attendees of the 15th Annual Friends of Scouting Luncheon at the Chattanooga Convention Center. It's all he really wanted to be since his first taste of life on the open sea. Phillips sees himself as a retired merchant marine. Several have held for several years, with no apparent hope of release on the horizon, and the pirates still steadfast in their belief they can still extort cash from their prisoners' impoverished families.Richard P. "These pirates can wait 10 years for a payment, but they are still not going to get anything from these hostages," said Roy Paul, who heads the Maritime Piracy Humanitarian Response, a coalition supporting captured seafarers. Steed recounts gruesome accounts of how some hostages have "been tortured while they're on the telephone with their families" including having their ears cut off.įor many of the hostages, Steed's team is one of only a handful of organizations still interested in their plight, liaising between the shipowners, the pirates and the desperate families. Some 90 sailors and fishermen are still being held, many from poor families in Asia, as well as Yemeni fishermen on six boats being used by the pirates as "mother ships," floating bases from which to launch their skiffs and attack large commercial vessels far out to sea. "These are poor people from poor families, and they simply do not have the money to pay the ransom - any ransom - that the pirates are demanding for their release," he added. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. ![]()
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