Sailor recalls pirate standoff as ship heads home to Norfolk

By Jaedda Armstrong

As he left on his first Navy deployment in February, Seaman Bryan F. Nuñez thought his seven months aboard the guided missile destroyer Bainbridge would drag on like a lifetime.

Little did he know his ship would take part in a mission that made him feel as if he was in the middle of an action-packed Hollywood blockbuster.

Nuñez, 20, shared the story in a phone interview Friday from the ship, which is due home at Norfolk Naval Station on Monday.

The high-seas drama unfolded April 8 when the Maersk Alabama, a cargo ship owned by a Norfolk-based shipping company, was attacked by Somali pirates off the coast of Africa.

Although the 20 crew members quickly regained control over the ship, their captain, Richard Phillips, was captured and held hostage for several days in a lifeboat that floated nearby.

The standoff ended when Navy SEALs fired on the pirates from the fantail of the Bainbridge, killing three of them.

During the standoff, Nuñez, who is a quartermaster, helped navigate the ship while his captain, Cmdr. Frank Castellano, tried to be in five other places at once.

The sailors around him were calm and collected during the ordeal, Nuñez said, but as the newbie on the team, he was in full panic mode. Everyone was on standby during the five-day ordeal, and he had to be ready to answer his captain’s call.

“I just wanted to get out of the whole situation safe,” he said. “We had to get up every day not knowing what would happen next. I prayed every day that we would get the captain back safe.”

The rest of the world was watching the action unfold on live television. Aboard the Bainbridge, outside communication was restricted, but the sailors could receive incoming e-mail.

Messages from Nuñez’s family wishing the crew the best of luck and praying for their safety jammed his inbox. The words brought him comfort during a hectic time, he said.

When Phillips finally was rescued, Nuñez said there was a sigh of relief on the ship. “I wanted everything to come out right, and it really did.”

The remaining time at sea whipped past, and the crew of 300 were kept very busy, he said.

The sailors patrolled the Gulf of Aden to combat piracy. They also conducted extensive surveillance of pirate camps and hijacked vessels and collected data to help locate pirate vessels.

The experience has taught Nuñez, who is from Boston, to be more disciplined in hectic situations and to expect the unexpected.

“I don’t even know what my next deployment will bring,” he said. “But this deployment set the standard for the rest – it’s going down in the history books for sure.”

Jaedda Armstrong, (757) 222-5846,

jaedda.armstrong@pilotonline.com