Story from CNN
The American captain of a cargo ship held hostage by pirates on a lifeboat off the coast of Somalia was rescued today by Navy SEALs. “We saw the captain was in imminent danger,” a U.S. official said. The SEALs shot and killed three of his four captors, the official said. Capt. Richard Phillips is uninjured and in good condition
Neat. Reads like a video game.
Does anyone know how the rescue actually happened? The CNN article mentions a lifeboat… did the SEALs swim up to it? Arrive by helicopter? Were the pirates in the middle of negotiations and suddenly executed when the captain jumped overboard, what?
Ok, according to the Wikipedia and other sources:
[ol]
[li]There were some previous crew vs pirate scuffles onboard the Alabama. The captain surrendered to ensure the safety of his crew. 4 pirates brought him onto a lifeboat along with 9 days of food and set out to sea to await the arrival of other pirates in other hijacked vessels who’d help shield them.[/li][li]The captain attempted an escape by jumping overboard, but the pirates fired shots (not wounding him) and recaptured him. In the process, they discarded their American-provided radio, used in negotiation, for fear that it was somehow secretly instructing the captain (?!).[/li][li]At some point (and the articles are unclear about this), their position is surrounded by US boats and 1 of the 4 pirates go onboard a US vessel to negotiate, leaving 3 to guard the captain.[/li][li]Now this is where it gets really vague: Eventually the captain attempts another escape and jumps overboard. 3 pirates are killed, the 4th arrested, and the captain is safe. I knew SEALs were tough, but this makes them sound like they’re capable of death-by-telepathy or something.[/li][/ol]
From the press conference:
The USS Bainbridge was towing the lifeboat. A pirate pointed a gun at the Captain’s back, and sailors on the Bainbridge shot them from 25m away.
That’s fantastic news. Kudos to everyone involved in this safe rescue of Capt. Phillips!!
The NYT article didn’t mention SEALs, but as soon as I read “U.S. Navy personnel…”, I said to my wife “SEAL team took them out.” Your ordinary swabbie on a ship doesn’t have that sort of marksmanship skills.
I was wondering how long before they brought in the SEALs… Glad it had a happy ending, at least for the Capt. Phillips!
This is a great story! I’m so happy for the captain, his family, and his crew. That captain is a hero, telling his crew to lock themselves in a room when the pirates took over the ship, while he was willing to sacrifice himself to save them.
The pirates have indicated that hostages will be killed in the future, which makes no sense, but they want to instill fear:
According to this article, President Obama personally signed off on the order to go ahead with the rescue. Looks like he was asked twice, and gave his permission twice. I guess they wanted to make sure, huh?
thankfully a happy outcome for captain phillips. sounds like things happened very fast and a small window of opportunity was taken advantage of.
Thank you. Looks like someone updated Wikipedia with that info too. Was that you?
You are very welcome.
No, I have never Wikied. 
A bit of good luck that the President’s first authorization of the use of deadly force went well. It’s part of the job, but Democrats tend to get more flack when things go badly than do Republicans.
The comments on the righty sites are amusing. They’re refusing to believe that Obama authorized any force. They’re coming up with all kinds of twisty spin moves to try to deny Obama any credit for this. They can’t stand it that he handled this so well. I think they really, really wanted the pirates to win, just so they could use it as a weapon against Obama. The cognitive dissonance is killing them now.
I called it in one of our other posts. It’s the kind of stuff the SEALS train for. Did you guys really need to bring politics into this though? The navy and the captain got a victory, why not just leave it at that?
I saw somewhere that the lifeboat was “floundering” and that they agreed that the USS Bainbridge be allowed to tow them with a rope/cable/whatever it was with 35 foot of slack. I wonder if the SEALs had anything to do with the “floundering?” 
In any event, this is a happy happy day. I’m glad the captain is safe and I’m glad Obama ordered force be used.
Where’s the fun in that? 
And FWIW, as a self-proclaimed lefty, I’m really surprised Obama authorized it too.
Absolutely. They are total pros at exactly this sort of situation.
Because the Navy Seals do not act on their own. They act as directed by their commanders, and in this sort of situation, those commanders present scenarios to the commander-in-chief, who makes the decision which option to pursue. And, when there are four armed men holding one unarmed man, there is a great possibility that everything could go south. And if it did, the Right would have never shut up about it.
See above. The Navy did not act alone. I’m sure the Situation Room at the White House has been busy through this whole episode. Every option was presented, by knowledgeable experts, and I’m sure many of the options offered were mutually exclusive. As the last President stated many times, he’s the “decider”. And Barack Obama decided correctly and everything turned out well.
We don’t know that it was his first such authorization. These things are generally kept secret unless everyone is watching.
The right wing media started bringing politics into it the second those hostages were taken.
For the record, I think GWB would have handled things pretty much exactly the same way. This is a situation where the CiC pretty much takes the advice of experts, give whatever authorization is needed and stays out of the way.
I’m very glad for him and his family that he’s ok. He’s from a town just about an hour away from here, so this has been getting a lot of attention in the local news, as well.