US ship arrives in Kenya minus kidnapped captain

The American ship whose captain is being held hostage arrived in Mombasa, Kenya today. Somali pirates are responsible for hijacking and now holding Captain Richard Phillips hostage. When the ship returned to the Kenyan port today it had nineteen remaining crew members on board. The ship captured was named the Maersk Alabama. Capt. Richard Phillips is still being held in a lifeboat hundreds of miles from the nearest land. U.S. warships are nearby monitoring the situation. The ship was attacked by Somali pirates firing automatic weapons on Wednesday. The unarmed crew locked themselves in a secure room to protect themselves. They managed to overpower one of the pirates but the other four escaped. The pirates left the ship in a lifeboat with the captain as a hostage.


I think this situation is ridiculous in so many ways. I cannot believe the United States has allowed this to continue over four days now. The American Captain is being held hostage on a small life raft hundreds of miles away from the shore. I cannot believe they have not sent a Navy Seal team in to end this hostage situation. As of right now we have massive battleships and naval carriers circling this rubber dingy boat. At the same time there is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) circling over the raft performing reconnaissance for the battleships. I think this situation should prove a lesson to the United States. We have watched many other vessels get captured by this same sort of pirate attacks and yet we have done nothing to secure our own. The crew aboard the American ship was unarmed and unable to protect themselves. The pirates know the crew is unarmed and so it makes the hijacking simple. This situation could be prevented so easily if the crew was armed with weapons. The addition of weapons would deter or slow the occurrence of situations such as these.

Randy Williams