![]() ![]() I could have maybe overpowered them by force, or something. In fact, I just thought I didn’t do enough. And that their captain was no longer in charge I was.ĭo you remember having any impulses, things you thought about doing and then went “No, I shouldn’t do that”? Initially, I was calling a Mayday, and then they asked who it was, and I told the pirates that I was in charge of the ship now, and I had their friend, and if they wanted to get off, they had to talk to me. What are your memories of that conversation with the pirates, when you were down in the engine room and had captured their leader? And then the crew of the Bainbridge told me they could hear my conversations with the pirates over the radio they’d been monitoring my frequency the whole time. And then when I saw the drone flying overhead, I knew somebody was listening. On the ship, were you aware that the story had gotten that big? ![]() And the movie kind of takes place just on the boat, and didn’t reference the White House, the president, that kind of thing. I figured they would cut to the family in Vermont, or some indication, because it was such a highly publicized news story. The biggest surprise was that they didn’t show more of the families at home, and the press coverage of them watching it. What didn’t we see in the movie? Anything you were surprised to see omitted? That was the “suppertime” code, to tell the crew it was safe to come out of hiding? Was that something that had been planned in advance? That was the most important thing to us, being able to communicate. The biggest thing - and the credit for this goes to Richard Phillips - was the duress/non-duress password. ![]() Given that you didn’t have weapons, what were you trained to do in a situation where the ship was boarded? You’ve never heard of it, because they have security onboard, and that ends the problem. The Maersk Alabama itself has been attacked eight more times since then. ![]() And they can return fire on the skiffs as they approach. Now companies can hire, and some do, onboard security teams, which are comprised of former Navy SEALS, former Marine Corps snipers, things like that. The merchant industry is slow to change, and it’s usually after some kind of crisis. But this event brought about a change in the industry. This is a very civilian question, but why would there be no gun onboard for use by the crew? My first day on the job, I heard one ship on the radio, was on fire from a bazooka shot, and trying to deal with the fire, and dealing with the pirates coming up over the rails. Were you expecting the pirates to be so heavily armed? So a part of you was like, “Okay, this is it, this is what I’ve been preparing for.” It’s scary, but when you prepare for something every day for a year and a half, then when it happens, time can slow down and you have to continue moving. In the film, the anxiety of watching those little dots getting closer and closer on the radar was so intense. And then a week later I was up on top of a crane, looking at four guys on the bridge with AK-47s, going, “Well, I guess this is real world experience.” Yeah, we drilled monthly like that, and I guest-lectured the week before that in my father’s class, doing an anti-piracy lecture. Did you have any kind of training for a situation involving pirates? I’d like to talk about the events on the ship, if that’s okay. He probably could’ve sworn a lot more, but I guess it had to be PG-13. The guy who played me, I’m glad they put a Red Sox hat on him! It was important to me that he didn’t dress like a corporate stooge. How was the experience of watching your story on a movie screen? “They could make movies out of any day of my life,” he told Vulture. Vulture called Murphy at his home in Massachusetts to talk about the real-life events on the Maersk Alabama, which he discussed with a stoicism that rivals a Bruce Willis character. Now, four years later, he says he’s recovered from the trauma and has nothing but praise for the film. Then 33 years old, he was a veteran at sailing the Horn of Africa and a trained expert in anti-piracy maneuvers. When the real Richard Phillips (played in the film by Tom Hanks) was taken hostage, Murphy ( played by Michael Chernus) took the helm for the remaining three days of the standoff. Shane Murphy was the first mate on the Maersk Alabama in 2009 when it was hijacked by Somali pirates, an event that is reenacted in Paul Greengrass’s heart-stopping Captain Phillips. Shane Murphy, with (inset) the actor who played him, Michael Chernus ![]()
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