A Captain's Duty: An extraordinary true story of piracy, heroism and survival on the high seas

'It never ends like this...'

Richard Phillips knew of the dangers. He'd said as much in an email to his wife.

And yet 8 April 2009 began as just another ordinary day for the fifty-three year-old captain of the Maersk Alabama, the US-flagged cargo ship carrying food and agricultural materials for the World Food Program. Ordinary that is until - some two hundred miles off the Horn of Africa - Somali pirates, armed with AK47s, attacked and boarded the freighter . . .

But the pirates didn't expect the crew to fight back. And they didn't plan on the captain offering himself as a hostage in place of his ship and crew. And ultimately they didn't bargain on the plain-talking, tough-as-nails officer they took as their prisoner. What followed was a tense five-day stand-off and an escalating battle of wills that would end in a daring and deadly high-seas rescue.

Captain Phillips' astonishing story is of an ordinary man who did what he saw as his duty, and in so doing became a hero.