A Captain's Duty

radio. “Chief,” I said softly. “Tell these guys to keep close to the bulkhead. The pirates are going to see them.”
    He radioed a warning to the crew.
    Shane called down on the radio. He could see that I was having trouble getting the davit to work. I was hand-cranking it up from its cradle, as the emergency power still hadn’t clicked on.
    “You want me to send the bosun down to help you launch the boat?”
    “No, I do not,” I said. “I don’t want to give them any more hostages. I can launch the boat. You guys just keep out of sight and keep an eye on these pirates. I can’t see them all the time and I don’t want them showing up with a crew member in their clutches again.”
    “Roger,” Shane said.
    “What’s taking the power so long?” I called on the radio. “Tell the chief engineer there might be some switches flipped on the emergency generator panel. The Somalis were messing with them.”
    I heard the information passed down the line over the radio.
    Then I started bossing the pirates a little bit. Once you’re a captain, it’s hard to let go of old habits. I also wanted to keep them busy, so they wouldn’t notice what was happening with my men.
    “Okay,” I barked at Musso, “get over here. You work the motor mount. Make sure you don’t damage the prop when we clear the cradle. You”—pointing at Young Guy—“get in the boat. You’re the counterbalance. You’re going to keep the prop up so the engine doesn’t drop and snag. And you”—Tall Guy—“you can do something over there.”
    Tall Guy was on the radio with the chief engineer. They were like buddies now.
    “Chief, what’s the matter with the ship?”
    “Ship is a no-go, pirate,” Mike said.
    “Chief, why you such a problem?” And the pirates started to laugh.
    “Hello, my friend,” I called. “Get off your ass and start doing some work or we’ll never get out of here.”
    Shane must have heard this.
    “That’s my Cap,” he said, loud enough so I could hear him, and laughing at the same time. “Now he’s ordering the pirates around.”
    It was surreal. The mood had turned jovial. Suddenly we were just a bunch of guys trying to get a job done, and enjoying ourselves while we did it. For a few minutes, the pirates and the crew were no longer adversaries. That wouldn’t last long.
    Forty minutes in, we got power on the davit. I swung the boat out over the edge of the ship.
    “Okay, everybody in,” I said. “Jump in the boat and I’ll follow.”
    Just then, a thought flashed across my mind. The emergency release. The MOB had a release system mid-ship that sits about shoulder high. It consisted of a trailer hitch pin and a lever. If you pulled the pin and dropped the lever, the boat released from its metal brace and dropped to the water forty feet below. The mechanism could come in handy when you needed to get off a ship fast, when a fire was raging on your deck or the vessel was about to turn turtle and take you down to the bottom of the Atlantic.
    The thing was, I had to be on the boat to pull the pin. I couldn’t do it from the Maersk Alabama ’s deck. So I’d have to pull the pin, drop the lever, and in the same instant grab hold of the metal brace and let the boat fall to the water. Boom, boom, boom . I’d be left dangling off the side of the ship while the Somalis plunged toward the ocean. They’d probably break their backs at the very least. Water doesn’t compress, which means it’s no more forgiving than concrete when you’re dropping onto it from a distance.
    Once the boat was away, I could swing back onto the deck like Indiana Jones.
    But if I didn’t manage to catch the brace, I’d be dead. Or if my foot tangled in a rope as the MOB dropped, I’d be dead. Or if one of the pirates survived and fired off a few rounds at the bastard who’d nearly killed him, I’d be dead.
    I was making the final preparations to lower the boat. The pirates were finding their seats and spreading out over the MOB’s benches. I had maybe thirty seconds to decide.
    Can I grab it quick enough? I thought. I just didn’t know. My hands practiced the maneuver in the air. Pull, release, grab. Pull, release, grab. All in a split second. I tried to picture it in my mind. It was that last step that I fixated on. Will my fingers slip off the metal? Will I have dropped too far to grab hold?
    Finally, I said the hell with it. Let me just get these guys in the water. The pirates lost their ladder when they