A Captain's Duty

what we’re going to do. Anyone who can work, come with me. Anyone who can’t, go to your rooms. You’re scaring the rest of the crew.”
    Four of the guys came with me and the others scattered to their quarters.
    I raced to the engine room. Our chief engineer was working furiously on the power plant.
    “Get me a status report,” I said. He nodded. He was what we call “fully tasked,” that is, working like hell on six different things that needed doing immediately.
    I hurried down to the cargo holds. Opening the door, I shone my flashlight in to the enormous half-lit space. What I saw wasn’t encouraging. Six inches of viscous motor oil was slopping around the floor. Fifty-five-gallon drums were reduced to the size of footballs by the constant pounding on the hulls. Five-hundred-pound bombs, stacked twenty to a pallet and two pallets high, were tipping back and forth and slamming against one another and the hull.
    I called the chief mate. “You need to get some guys in the hold and secure that cargo,” I yelled. If one of those bombs blew, pieces of the ship the size of a quarter would be raining downon the Spanish coast for half an hour. He rounded up two ABs—the only ones out of twenty men not too sick or scared to go into the holds—and they went and wrestled the bombs and the barrels back into place.
    Twelve hours later, the engine was back up and running and the bombs were on their way to being secured. Disaster averted.
    There are a thousand ways to die on a ship. But when you run into one face-to-face and survive it, it teaches you how to think your way through the next one.

SEVEN
-1 Day
    From here down to Mombasa, potential is high for a piracy incident. Keep a wary eye.
    —Captain’s night orders, Maersk Alabama, April 7, 2000 hours
    T hat night the crew gathered over the dinner table. You could feel the electricity in the air.
    “Was that your first piracy situation, Cap?”
    “Sure was,” I said, as I sat down to the meal. “Hope it’s my last, too.”
    This wasn’t the first time the subject had come up. Just the other day Colin, the third mate, had asked, “You know what I was thinking?”
    “What’s that?”
    “What do we do if we’re taken hostage?”
    I had stared at Colin then.
    “You’re worried about that?”
    Colin nodded. He seemed nervous.
    “If you’re scared, Colin, you should never have gotten on this ship,” I said. “You didn’t know where it was heading?”
    I didn’t want a crewman injecting a note of panic into our run. I needed the crew to be confident and to project confidence. If Colin was terrified of ending up in a Somali boat, he should have worked that out with me before we sailed.
    Being taken hostage was sort of a taboo subject among sailors. Anything—even shipwreck—is better.
    “Look, we’ve got to crawl before we can walk,” I said finally. “I want to make sure we master the antipiracy drills first.”
    But I could sense his unease. Suddenly the problem of piracy wasn’t abstract anymore, it wasn’t a headline or a rumor they heard in the union hall. They’d seen the Somali ships with their own eyes and they’d felt pretty damn defenseless against them.
    “I can give you the short version right now,” I said.
    Colin nodded.
    “That’d be good,” he said.
    “It’s pretty simple,” I said. “First off, do not mention religion. It’s kryptonite. Don’t antagonize them by trying to talk about Allah or Jesus and whatever you do don’t try to convince them that your faith is better than theirs. Politics is out, too, especially the Middle East. They may try to antagonize you by saying America is the worst country in the world. You’re not there to defend the nation’s honor. You’re trying to survive. So let that pass.”
    It was all we had time for at that moment. Later, Colin came up to me, still seeming nervous about the possibility of beingintercepted by Somalis. There were other crew members around, so I continued my tutorial.
    “Do whatever they tell you,” I said. “Give them as little information as possible. You’ve got giveaways, things that aren’t important that you offer up to build rapport, and hold-backs, which are things you keep to yourself unless you’re under severe threat.”
    “What would constitute a giveaway?” someone asked.
    I shrugged. “Showing them how to get fresh water. Getting them familiar with the safety equipment. You’ve got to make them feel they’re in control while all the