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A Captain's Duty
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A Captain's Duty
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A Captain's Duty
Audiobook8 hours

A Captain's Duty

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

8th April 2009 was just an ordinary day for Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama as it headed towards the port of Mombasa. Ordinary that is until, armed Somali pirates attacked and boarded the freighter. Captain Phillips offered himself as a hostage in exchange for the safety of his crew, and so began a tense five-day stand-off, which ended in a daring high-seas rescue by U.S. Navy SEALs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 7, 2013
ISBN9781471246562
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A Captain's Duty

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Reviews for A Captain's Duty

Rating: 3.7333333333333334 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I only read this because it was our book club pick. I liked the history of the Merchant Marines--I had no clue how integral they are to everything I enjoy on a daily basis.

    The description of Phillips' experience is harrowing, and the writing isn't anything to get excited about. But the story is definitely compelling, and for our book club meeting we saw the movie (I wouldn't have chosen to see the movie otherwise) and it wasn't bad.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is an interesting, well-written book. I saw that some reviewers didn't like the way Phillips started with his background - what his youth was like and how he got into the Merchant Marines - but I not only found it interesting, I thought that it made it easier to understand who he was, how he ended up where he was, and how and why he made his decisions.

    Thank goodness most of us will never face a life-or-death situation like this -- much less have the lives of others depending on our decisions and choices -- and I appreciated the opportunity to vicariously share Captain Phillips' experience.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book. It gave me insight into the Merchant Marine as well as the piracy and attitudes towards it. This was an quick story to read and held your attention throughout. Captain Phillips saved his crew at great risk to himself and his crew did not let him down. I am glad I read this book before seeing the movie.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Phillips' memoir primarily covers the time when he was being held hostage in his container ship's lifeboat by Somali pirates.

    But an unexpected pleasure is that Phillips also relates stories of his past and family life that help explain how he found himself in such a situation, how & maybe why he behaved as he did when pirates boarded his ship, and what was happening back home during his ordeal.

    toward the end, he explains the significance of a Kenyan priest's saying from a homily the family heard & repeated often back in the usa: "God is great" & it's refrain: "always" !

    this simple call and refrain lifts both phillips & his wife, and reading about that amidst the otherwise rather grueling and brutal circumstances of his captivity was like finding the pearl in the oyster bed for me !
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great account of Capt. Phillips and his capture by Somali pirates in 2009. Interspersed in the account is the story of his life and his family along with the training of the Merchant Marines, of which he was trained. Even though the information of the ship was technical, it was written in a very readable fashion. I would recommend this for anyone interested in non-fiction accounts of strength and heroism.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Watched the film before reading the book. It's always hard to know how this affects your reading of the book, but I really enjoyed it. I liked and respected Captain Phillips and his approach to life, attitude and love for his family. Harrowing experience; easy read. It must be hard, but I think he found the right balance between biographical detail and focusing on the main narrative - being the piracy.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Like one of the reviewers says 'he makes himself out to be the toughest man on earth'. Really annoying. Added to this, his regular description of himself as Irish and Irish personality traits was quite irritating also.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Having seen the movie, I was interested to hear about the experience in his own words. I was definitely not disappointed. The book, as is almost always true, is SO much better than the movie. There are a lot of details which couldn't be fit into a two hour time frame of a movie, as well as a lot more about what was going on back at home while he was in captivity. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who has seen the movie
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very compelling story told by the captain himself, Captain Richard Phillips. This autobiography tells the story of Captain Phillips and his experience as a barge captain. In 2009, Captain Phillips was the captain of a barge ship traveling along the coast of Africa near Somalia when his ship was attacked and boarded by Samoan pirates. Captain Phillip's crew did everything they could to stay alive, but in the end the pirates left the ship with $30,000 and took Captain Phillips with them. The crew radioed for help right away and Navy Seals were sent to rescue Captain Phillips. The story is told by Captain Phillips and his first hand account of the five days he spent as a hostage at sea before being rescued. A very compelling story that will make you keep turning the pages to see what happens next.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nice piece of work from current history. Tells the story of a senior USA merchant mariner besot by pirates in the Indian Ocean from his perspective...up close and personal. It's also a tale of servant leadership from which we all can learn. From the beginning of the country, Yankee sailors have gone down to the sea and fought its perils. This is but one more--made into a movie, which I can't wait to see.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Most of you know the story. In 2009, the merchant vessel Maersk Alabama was hijacked by four Somali pirates off the coast of Somalia. Her captain, Richard Phillips, was taken hostage and was not freed until several days later when a Navy SEALs team shot and killed the pirates. It became a national story almost immediately: the first American vessel hijacked by Somali pirates, a miraculous and brave rescue by the U.S. military (always a hit with the news), and a new-found hero in the figure of Captain Phillips, who, we're told, risked his own life to keep his crew safe.A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea is Captain Phillip's personal account of the events. Beginning days before the hijacking, Phillips lays out a populist account of the politics of coastal Somalia, life on merchant vessels, the history of the merchant mariners, and the personal struggles he and his wife endured during and, to a lesser extent, after the hijacking. As a work meant to educate and entertain, it is at times quite dull, and at other times quite fascinating, though not necessarily for the reasons you'd expect.What I found most compelling about this book were its sections on life in pirate-heavy seas. Many of the chapters are preceded by quotes highlighting previously successful hijackings, and the chapters themselves provide a fair amount of detail about the procedures for dealing with piracy and the knowledge sea captains like Phillips must acquire before and after they traverse the seas. These sections were the most interesting in the book, as they highlighted the real problem piracy poses and provided Phillips' personal perspective on the issue. If anything, these sections do far more to describe who Phillips is than any of the chapters about the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama. They likewise provide a somewhat populist view of the issues in the Somali region, which do certainly add sympathy to an already sympathetic figure.However, these chapters are sometimes overloaded by excessive description. The book was clearly written for a general audience, yet some sections of the book obsess over the minute details of ship life, most of which have no direct bearing on the events yet to unfold. One section on the captain's duty to inspect the ship could easily have been left as a short paragraph explaining what the inspection is for. I'm sure someone who finds ship life idyllic -- or, perhaps, romantic -- will find value in these sections, but I personally felt they drew away from the more pressing concern: piracy. Truthfully, I was far more interested in how an actual ship captain views life in dangerous waters than in everyday ship life, as it is difficult to form an objective opinion on such matters from the safety of my computer chair. Regardless, though there are some rather dull sections in the book, the overall thrust of the first few chapters is worth reading, if only for the reasons I have already stated.Unfortunately, Phillips' account of the actual hijacking strains credulity. While one can forgive him for making assumptions about his attackers, mis-remembering details, or even conjuring some up in an apparent dream-like daze, his assessment of his own behavior from the beginning of the hijacking makes one wonder why the U.S. Navy was all that concerned about Somali pirates in the first place. For example, Phillips reminds us more than once that the Somalis have been enormously successful at hijacking ships and earning ransom as a result. At no point are we to believe these pirates are completely inept at what they do, even if they are poorly armed, trained, and supplied. Phillips spends considerable time, as I've noted above, describing how Somalis perform hijackings, their success rate, the politics, and so on, painting a fairly clear picture of just who we're about to deal with; that picture offers credence to the threat of hijacking.But once the hijacking occurs, the Somalis are presented as dimwitted to the extreme, completely inept at just about everything; they are described like children who only just figured out how to turn on the boat. They seem utterly perplexed by the boat's machinery, despite clearly having at least a basic understanding of radar equipment. Worse, throughout the ordeal, Phillips claims to have been in continuous contact with hidden members of the crew via a handheld radio he "snuck away." Only he repeatedly uses this radio right in front of the Somalis, or at least within sight, such that it's really quite impossible to believe that they haven't noticed. This is made more unbelievable when we're reminded that the Somalis are rather annoyed that Phillips doesn't know where the rest of his crew is. One problem: clearly he does, and even if he didn't, he's clearly in contact with them.This particular issue doesn't get better over time. Frequently, Phillips is shown giving away tactical information to the crew -- numbers, weapons, positions, etc. -- while looking straight in the eye of the hijackers. It's as if we're supposed to believe these Somalis are not only really bad at what they do, but completely disinterested in the fact that their captive is sharing sensitive information with the very people they wish to find (or, in some cases, with the military itself, as Phillips communicates with the U.S.S. Bainbridge while trapped in the cramped lifeboat). All of this is dropped from the film adaptation -- probably for the exact reason that bothered me: it just doesn't make sense.The book's other flaws are in its contradictions. For example, Phillips tells us that the Somalis let him swim in the ocean to cool off after kidnapping him and fleeing in the lifeboat. But several chapters later, Phillips tells us the Somalis never let him out. One of these two statements is true; they both can't be. These details draw into question other aspects of the narrative, such as Phillips' claim that a Somali boat came to talk with the leader of the hijackers; the Navy, apparently, denies anything of the sort happened, which Phillips rejects for no reason other than because "he says so." If he were to at least admit that his account is perhaps colored by his experience, some of these details could be forgiven.Basically, the deeper Phillips takes us into his experiences as a kidnap victim, the less credible his account becomes. Detached from the experience, he is able to paint a thorough picture of conditions at sea, but in trying to apply the same rigor to the moment of trauma, he invariably paints himself into a corner from which he cannot escape. This is, quite frankly, an unbelievable book which would fail even as a work of fiction.In all fairness, I can understand why the book fails as much as it does. Trauma has a way of fragmenting memory, which might explain why Don Delillo's mostly disliked post-9/11 novel, Falling Man, is largely told in fragments. Phillips tries to account for these fragmented memories by injecting an illusory voice of authenticity, but instead fictionalizes his own account. On that front alone, there might be some value, as those interested in studying trauma may find something of value in a book which, in my mind, falls apart precisely because it is an attempt to remove the personal account from the effects of the event. For me, however, I found myself unwilling to cede narrative ground for a book which exceeds the boundary of its genre simply by failing to adhere to the genre's basic necessities. At the very least, non-fiction demands the illusion of truth.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book far more than I had imagined I would. It gives a fair amount of insight into the career of a merchant marine to those of us who don't have any personal experience in the field. While the beginning of the book seemed to lag a bit, once Cpt. Phillips encounters the pirates things really pick up. Worth a read.