Maersk Alabama captain thanks Bainbridge crew

NORFOLK

There are no rules of etiquette for thanking the highly trained snipers who killed your captors, no guidelines about how to express gratitude to the crew of a warship that stood by while pirates held you hostage.

So Capt. Richard Phillips did what felt right Thursday. He quietly and personally thanked dozens of sailors on the Bainbridge, the Norfolk-based destroyer that played a major role in his rescue from Somali pirates in April.

“You are the patriots,” Phillips said in a short ceremony on the flight deck of the ship,  docked behind Nauticus on the waterfront. “You are the heroes in the story involving me.”

Phillips was skipper of the Maersk Alabama when pirates boarded the container ship, loaded with food aid, off the coast of Somalia on April 8. He offered himself up in exchange for the ship and its crew, then spent five harrowing days in a lifeboat with increasingly jittery captors.

The Bainbridge steamed to the Gulf of Aden and remained in view throughout the ordeal, which ended, days later, with Navy SEAL snipers aboard the ship shooting and killing three pirates.

Thursday afternoon, Phillips, a Vermont native, shook hands with 16 sailors chosen for special recognition for their performance  during that tense week in April, giving each a commemorative coin minted by the city. An  additional 15 sailors received coins Thursday evening at an invitation-only celebration attended by Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations.

There were other tokens of appreciation, too. Phillips’ wife, Andrea, gave Vermont-made chocolate to the crew; sister-in-law Lea Coggio brought enough maple syrup to supply breakfast to all 320 sailors aboard.

Various awards changed hands throughout the day.

Capt. Chuck Wolf accepted a plaque on behalf of the SEALs involved in the rescue. Phillips said he’d met the men whom he credits with saving his life, but none was publicly identified.

Nauticus  created a maritime valor award that Mayor Paul Fraim presented to Phillips.

Roughead praised both Phillips and the sailors for their actions.

“You have written a page in the history of our navy that will last forever,” he said. “All sailors have sea stories. This one …  this one is one only you can tell. Only you can have the bragging rights.”

Since the attack and rescue, Phillips has been engulfed by what he termed a “maelstrom” of media attention. He took a six-month leave of absence from his seagoing duties and is finishing a book to be published next year.

 He is a soft-spoken, self-deprecating Yankee who appears slightly uncomfortable in front of a phalanx of TV cameras, but who willingly endures it in order to show his gratitude.

Phillips and his alter ego, Cmdr. Frank Castellano, skipper of the Bainbridge, took questions from reporters inside Nauticus, where a pirate exhibit opens Saturday. 

The backdrop was the 22-foot enclosed orange lifeboat where Phillips lived alongside his captors.  This weekend, Phillips will be the  grand marshal of Norfolk’s Grand Illumination Parade.

 Phillips said seeing the lifeboat – on loan to Nauticus to complement the exhibit – didn’t bring back too many bad memories. It’s just another piece of safety equipment, he said.

“I have more attachment to that gray boat out there,” he said, referring to the Bainbridge.

The April incident called attention to hostile conditions in the waters around the Horn of Africa, where poverty in the failed state of Somalia has led to increasingly brazen pirate attacks on merchant and cruise ships, private watercraft and even military vessels.

Patrolling the area has become one of the major tasks for Norfolk-based Navy ships like the Bainbridge.

Another attack this week on the Alabama was repelled by an on-board security contingent – one of the changes Maersk has made since April.

Phillips said he didn’t know much about the recent attempted hijacking of the Maersk Alabama, but he complimented the crew for thwarting the attack. The oceans are too vast to rely on military vessels for protection, he said. So merchant crews must “train, train and train” to prepare for worst-case scenarios.

He credited both his crew on the Maersk Alabama and the Bainbridge for having proved their mettle amid  a crisis.

Petty Officer 2nd Class John Sessions, a fire controlman aboard the Bainbridge, had just a few seconds with Phillips after receiving his coin and handshake from the captain. Sessions and another sailor spent most of the 96 hours watching what was happening inside the lifeboat with a special camera usually used in conjunction with the ship’s 5-inch gun.

“Sir, we had our eyes on you the entire ordeal,” he told Phillips. “We would not have allowed it to turn out any other way.”

 Phillips plans to go back to work aboard the Maersk Alabama in March.

“It’s what I’ve done, it’s who I am,” he said. “I’ve never had reservations about going to sea.”

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com