Book Review: A Captain's Duty by Richard Phillips, Bantam Books, 2010

I saw this in the library when looking for a book about CEVNI. It’s the story of a pirate attack on the US flagged Maersk Alabama which happened off the coast of Somalia in April 2009. It says this was the first pirate attack on a US vessel in recent times.

The ship is boarded by four pirates. In the end the captain ends up in a life boat with the pirates and is finally rescued by the US Navy. The story of how they handle the pirates and chase each other around the ship is quite interesting. Overall though, the book is far too long. The core of it could be one long article. I wasn’t terribly interested in the extensive description of the captains relationship and history with his wife which made up much of the book. Overall it is a case of a story which could have been told much better.

The wikipedia article tells most of it better.