Book deal, casting call: Pirates, SEALs and a DDG
January 29th, 2010 | Books Maritime operations merchant ships Pirates | Posted by Phil Ewing
"Thanks for savin' me, sailor -- hey, did you hear I've got a book coming out?" // MC3 David Danals / Navy
This week the Center of Excellence got a truckload of “advance uncorrected proofs” of “A Captain’s Duty,” a forthcoming memoir by Richard Phillips, the merchant captain saved by the Navy last year after he was taken hostage by Somali pirates. In his cover photo, Phillips wears a command baseball cap (although not a Pirate Brigade cap) from the destroyer Bainbridge, which was instrumental in his rescue.
Phillips’ book is full of new details about his ordeal.
According to his account, Phillips made himself a real pill for the pirates. He tried to escape the infamous lifeboat and talked back to them even as they held him at gunpoint; once, when he pulled off his blindfold, a pirate slapped him across the face. “What are you going to do,” Phillips says he spat back — “shoot me?” Later, he shouted at the pirates that they were “going to pay for this, they were going to die in this boat and they were nothing but pirates. They hated that word.”
The pirate leader screamed at Phillips to shut up. “I won’t shut up,” Phillips says he said. “You’re nothing but freaking pirates and that’s how you’re going to die.”
In point of fact, he was correct: Three simultaneous shots fired by three SEAL snipers saw to that.
One note: Although the Navy said at the time that the snipers fired because they believed the pirates were leveling their weapons at Phillips, he makes no mention of that in “A Captain’s Duty.” Instead, he says he was about to get into a makeshift bed on the floor of the lifeboat when the now-famous take-down happened.
Also, when Phillips was flown from Bainbridge to the amphibious assault ship Boxer, he asked for, and got, a beer. In fact, sailors brought him a whole cooler full of beer, he wrote.
Here’s another interesting item from the promotional material that accompanied the “advanced uncorrected proofs:” There’s a movie deal in all of this.
According to information from publisher Hyperion, Columbia Pictures has optioned the movie rights with a group of producers that includes actor Kevin Spacey. Which raises the crucial questions: Who should play Phillips? Who should play Bainbridge skipper Cmdr. Frank Castellano? What high-speed young actors should play the anonymous SEALs who saved the day?
Comments
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Shawn Blickley Says:
January 30th, 2010 at 6:06 pmI find it amazing that all of these stories forget the 2 units critical to the sucess of the operation. USS Halyburton and the Helicopter detachment from HSL 46 did a lot of the heavy lifting during the standoff. It is truly a shame that only one unit takes all the praise. Check out all the video from the Stand off…. Helicopters and an FFG….
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Bill Johnston ETCS Ret. Says:
February 12th, 2010 at 2:21 pmBlickley is right. He’s always right.
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The Scoop Deck – The persistant pirate problem Says:
March 24th, 2010 at 9:00 am[...] up for the release of “A Captain’s Duty,” the memoir of former pirate captive Richard Phillips, but as Scoop Deck readers know, the pirate situation never went away. As a matter of fact, Somali [...]
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The Scoop Deck – See for yourself: Capt. Richard Phillips Says:
April 20th, 2010 at 8:56 am[...] couple of months ago we told you about the forthcoming book — and media blitz — from Capt. Richard Phillips of the pirate-victim container ship Maersk Alabama. Now it’s here, and Phillips appeared this [...]
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The Scoop Deck – Shoot to thrill Says:
August 18th, 2010 at 5:52 pm[...] still-unknown trio of SEAL snipers whose quick work ended an action-movie hostage standoff over the abducted American captain of a cargo ship. And although the world may never know much more about those men and their story, [...]