March 28, 2009, by driving with his wife from their home in Underhill, Vermont, Captain Phillips is ready to be the captain of Maersk Alabama, an unarmed container ship moving from Salalah Port, Oman, to Mombasa through Gulf of Aden which is a location known for the pirate activity off the coast of Somalia. In the middle of their journey, Captain Phillips can see through his binoculars that there are two skiffs look like approaching them. To find out if they are pirates who try to hunt their container or not, he orders his crew to change a little bit of their direction and the two skiffs are indeed following them.
Phillips deceives the skiffs by acting he is calling for help from air military causing one of the skiffs turns back. But in the next day, one of the skiffs, led by Abdulwali Muse, comes back to hijack the container with his three crews: Hufan, Bilal and Najee. The pirates are equipped with complete guns and start to shoot the container crews. Captain Phillips orders to spray them with high-speed water with their ship hose. It can hamper the pirate's plan but unfortunately it can not stop them. They install a ladder to the ship body and climb up, to take control the ship with the guns in their hands.
The Captain orders his crew to hide in the engine room while he tries to negotiate with Muse and his gang. He offers them $30.000 saved in the ship's save and they will consider nothing happens. The pirates ask more. They ask 1 million dollars from the ship crews' insurance. Muse tell that he is the captain and orders the Captain to bring him to the engine room, which he does not know is the place where the crews are hiding. The crews have turned off the engine so most of the parts of the ship are dark. One of the pirates get feet injured so badly in the engine room so Phillips offers to help to heal him. They go back to the control room and Muse is left behind in the engine room. The dark room is taken as a chance by Phillips' crew to attack Muse to ransom their captain and they will bring the pirates a lifeboat, too.
Captain Phillips tells them where the lifeboat is but the pirates asks him to tell them how to use it. His crews have prohibited Phillips to follow what the pirates ask but Phillips is on his own way. He follows the pirates to enter the lifeboat and gives them the explanation in how to run the lifeboat. Unexpectedly, Muse stabs him and now he is their hostage; something he has emphasized to his crews not to happen.
The USS Bainbridge, U.S. Navy destroyer, starts to heads for the shore to help the captain. And it is increasingly chaotic for the gang as they run out their khat (a flowering plant that is native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Among communities from these areas, khat chewing has a history as a social custom dating back thousands of years. Khat contains a monoamine alkaloid called cathinone, an amphetamine-like stimulant, which is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite, and euphoria. In 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified it as a drug of abuse that can produce mild-to-moderate psychological dependence(less than tobacco or alcohol), although WHO does not consider khat to be seriously addictive. -- Source)
In that precarious moment, Phillips tries to negotiate with Muse that the U.S. Navy will not just lest it like nothing happen, they will not just free Muse and his men since they have gone too far. Knowing his negotiation is rejected out of hand, Phillips offers to help Hufan (the youngest pirate who is the softest among them) with his wound. Secretly Phillips says that he will help Hufan. While in USS Bainbridge, Frank Castellano is ordered to prevent the pirates from reaching the mainland by whatever means necessary. They are success to approach the lifeboat and start the negotiation. Muse raises the amount to be 10 millions dollars but he doesn't realize there is a surveillance equipment has been installed in his boat.
That night, Phillips throws Hufan who is on his duty to watch the captain to the water and is able to escape by swimming towards the ships. But the navy cannot identify the swimmer as Phillips, and therefore they take no action. Giving up on his escaping trial, Phillips forcefully swims back to the lifeboat. The further agitated pirates are also unaware that a SEAL Team has parachuted in to intervene.
While three SEAL marksmen get into positions to fire a simultaneous shot at each of the pirates on the lifeboat, the SEALs continue to try to negotiate with the pirates, eventually taking the lifeboat under tow. Eventually, Muse agrees to board the Bainbridge, believing he will join his clan elders in negotiating Phillips' ransom. In the lifeboat, one of the more agitated pirates, Najee, catches Phillips writing a goodbye note to his wife. When he tries to take the note away, Phillips attacks Najee, but is quickly restrained and beaten.
Najee decides to take full control; the pirates tie Phillips up and blindfold him, and the Bainbridge crew stops the tow. As Phillips is about to be executed, the three SEAL marksmen finally get three clear shots and simultaneously kill the pirates. On board the Bainbridge, Muse is taken into custody and arrested for piracy. And Phillips is rescued and treated.
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Richard Phillips returned to Vermont on April 17, 2009 and was reunited with his family and on July 25, 2009, the captain went back to the sea. Whereas Abdulwali Muse, the only pirate survivor, was convicted of piracy as is currently serving 33 years at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana.
The Real Captain Phillips and the crew of the Maersk Alabama
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