Capt. Richard Phillips, master of the Maersk Alabama who’s been held hostage since Wednesday, was rescued late this morning Eastern time.  It’s been reported that when the pirates were sleeping or otherwise unaware, he made another attempt to escape and jumped overboard, at which point the Navy was able to neutralize the pirates.  Of the four pirates holding him hostage, 3 were shot and killed by Navy snipers, and 1 is currently in custody on board a U.S. Navy vessel.

Everyone in the maritime community is thrilled with the positive outcome.  The Academy will be having public celebrations of his release and of the safe return of the crew.  I’ll be posting about updates to this as it happens.

The recent turn of events for the Maersk Alabama has had an interesting and prominent connection to Mass Maritime.  As I reported in my last post, both the captain and the Chief Mate on board that ship are Academy graduates, as well as the mate being the son of one of our professors, Capt. Joseph Murphy.

Since Capt. Murphy is both closely tied to the situation and an experienced and well-known mariner himself, the news media has gravitated to him for answers like flies on butter at a picnic.  Since early yesterday afternoon, they have been interviewing him continuously as new information was received about the situation on board the Alabama.  During my last class yesterday around 2 PM, there were about 6 or 7 TV trucks parked on campus broadcasting, as well as reporters from radio stations and newspapers around the area.  When I came back to campus after being out last night, there were still a few news trucks at 11 PM.  This morning, there were news crews here already setting up and filming during morning formation.  As the day has gone on, crews have been filing back on to campus and setting up to resume their coverage with Capt. Murphy right here from MMA.

After lunch today I walked down towards Blinn Hall and the canal, where most of the trucks were parked, to take a look at the commotion.  I managed to snap a few pictures of the scene.

These are a few of the news trucks on campus today.  These particular ones arrived shortly before lunch, apparently to get footage in time for the noon news broadcasts.

Shown here is Capt. Murphy speaking with news crews before doing an on-camera interview.  Click on the picture to get more details.

Everyone here at MMA has been concerned for the crew of the Alabama & their families, and are hopeful that this will end peacefully.  It was a relief to hear that the ship was underway again with a sizeable security force on board, headed for Kenya.  Still, seeing familiar names and images of places around campus on national news networks has been an odd & exciting sensation.  There was a lot of pride and positive energy around campus when we heard that Mass Maritime graduates successfully retook their ship from pirates.  This has certainly been an unusual couple of days.

If you’d like to see the rest of the pictures I took this afternoon, you can view them on Flickr.

For those who may not have heard yet, or do not have full details, the American-flagged ship Maersk Alabama was hijacked early this morning off the coast of Somalia by pirates.  The ship carries a crew of approximately 20 American citizens, of which are graduates of Massachusetts Maritime Academy.  The Chief Mate aboard the ship, Shane Murphy, is a 2001 graduate as well as the son of Capt. Joseph Murphy, a professor here at the academy and very prominent figure in the maritime industry for his contributions to education and safety at sea.

Here are the highlights of the situation, up to this point:

• The ship was attacked by pirates early this morning, which the ship’s crew tried to fight off for about 5 hours
• Once unsuccessful at repelling the pirates, they locked themselves in the steering gear room of the vessel, effectively hiding from the pirates
• The crew managed to overpower one of the four pirates aboard, taking him as their own prisoner.
• The remaining pirates took the master of the vessel, Capt. Richard Phillips (also a graduate of MMA), as prisoner and retreated from the vessel using a lifeboat from the ship, and taking Capt. Phillips with them
• The crew of the Alabama negotiated a release agreement, to hand over the pirate they captured in exchange for their captain.  The crew provided the captured pirate, but the other pirates reneged on the deal and kept Capt. Phillips hostage.
• The crew has been attempting to negotiate the release of the captain using any other means aboard the vessel, such as food, with no success.
• The U.S. Navy was alerted of the incident when it happened, and has dispatched a destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, to aid the Maersk Alabama.  They were more than 200 miles from the Alabama when they received the distress call.  They have since arrived at the Somalian coast, where the captain is being held.

There is no word yet on the status of the captain, but earlier today the Second Mate on board the Alabama said that the captain had a ship’s radio with him and was maintaining contact with his crew.  Shane Murphy is currently commanding the vessel.

Capt. John Konrad over at gCaptain has been maintaining an excellent live blog post with updates to the situation.  You can find that post here.

As a result of Capt. Murphy’s son being on board the ship, Mass Maritime’s campus has been flooded with media crews today, interviewing Capt. Murphy and doing live reports from campus.  A number of cadets were either interviewed or shown in footage aired on TV, which is said to be airing on Good Morning America (and possibly other shows) tomorrow.  Keep an eye out for that, as well as new developments to this story.

Please keep the crew and their families in your thoughts as they go through this ordeal.

As most people are fully aware, piracy has become a major issue recently, particularly off the coast of Africa.  Numerous merchant vessels have been attacked and hijacked, left vulnerable to these attacks by crews that are at a disadvantage from lack of effective defenses.

Mass Maritime has recognized this problem, and yesterday gave training to 6 cadets, with the help of the Bourne Police Department, in handgun firing.  The Cape Cod Times has the full story, which you can find at their web site.

Voice your opinion: should merchant vessels carry firearms on board to defend against pirates?  Should this become a required part of licensing?  How does this fit into merchant mariner training?  Leave your comments below.

I’m writing from the John F. Germany Public Library in Tampa with 2/C Balcunas, checking e-mail and other various Internet items.  It’s cold here today (54 degrees Fahrenheit) so it’s a good day to do indoor things.

Tampa has been a pretty mellow port for me so far.  Sunday my grandfather and partner came up from Fort Myers and we spent a few hours together, touring Tampa and going out to lunch, which was really great.  After that, I ended up catching up on sleep for the rest of the day.  Yesterday I had watch, so between watch shifts I hung out watching movies and sleeping.  Today is the first day that I’ve gone out and done stuff with other Maritimers, and tonight I’m planning on going to the MMA-USF rugby game.  A bunch of my friends are going to go too, so it should be a good time.

As you’ve probably already heard, SeaWave/Globe Wireless went down towards the end of last week, which is why I haven’t posted in a few days.  A technician is coming from Globe Wireless tomorrow morning to fix it, so we should be back on the air by the time we’re leaving Tampa.  I look forward to being able to post from sea again.

I’ve gotten a number of good suggestions that I’m going to act upon once we get underway (thank you to everyone who submitted those).  I’ve gotten quite a few requests for me to feature other cadets, which I plan to do starting on the trip from Tampa to San Juan, so keep an eye out.  Who knows, your cadet may be the one quoted on here!

I’m going to sign off for now and head back out into Tampa.  Hopefully next time I post I’ll be doing so from aboard the T.S. Kennedy.

Captain Tom Bushy, master of Mass Maritime’s T.S. Kennedy, will be appearing on WGBH’s program “Greater Boston” tonight at 7pm to discuss the piracy problems off the coast of Somalia, and to provide some insight into life aboard large commercial ships.

If you miss the show, I will try to get a copy of it posted here.

As I’m sure most people are now aware, the Academy trustees have voted to rename the training ship to the USTS Kennedy, in honor of Ted Kennedy’s service as a U.S. Senator for Massachusetts.  I was asked last week via Skribit that I write about cadet reactions to the name change.

There hasn’t been much discussion among cadets about the name change, to be honest.  We heard a little bit about it at the beginning of the year, and were asked to express our opinions via e-mail about a possible name change.  A few weeks later we were informed that the change was going to take place.  Since the announcement, there have been some passing comments made, but nobody’s discussing it too much since the decision’s already been made.

As far as the comments that are being made: certainly there are jokes and such being made about naming a ship after a man who had an accident involving the water, and other jokes related to that.  However, there have also been positive comments about the fact that it may help bring the school some more publicity.

I haven’t really tried to get involved in such discussions since I really don’t know much about Ted Kennedy.  However, I do know that he’s been a public servant for many, many years and that, despite personal opinions of his mistakes or policies, his time in office is a reflection of patriotism in itself, so I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t honor that.  Just my 2 cents.

What do you think of the name change?  Please post your thoughts in the comments area below.

This year my classmates in license majors and I started the Merchant Mariner Documentation process.  Merchant Mariner Documentation, or MMD, is the Coast Guard’s merchant marine identification and management system, keeping track of all registered merchant mariners in the United States.  It is required to have MMD in order to ship on any commercial vessel in the U.S., so we start the process about 15 months prior to shipping commercially.

We started the process by filling out the initial application, which included the usual pedigree information, as well as questions about personal history (legal issues, etc.) so that the Coast Guard has a record of full disclosure.  Each applicant undergoes a background check, so they want to make sure you’re honest and forthcoming about any issues they may discover in the process.

We’re waiting on the next step right now (I’m not sure when or what that is), but once we reach that I’ll make another post about it.

“Wait a minute Christiaan, this school year’s not even over and you’re already talking about next Sea Term? What’s up with that?”

Since Sea Term is such a large undertaking, as soon as we return from one the planning begins for the next one.  One of the biggest decisions that has to be made is what ports of call we will make.  Fortunately, the cadets get to have some input on this decision.  A few weeks ago, there was an open meeting for all cadets going on Sea Term 2009 to vote on the choices the Sea Term planners had narrowed down.  The decisions then had to be finalized, and we now know which ports we will be stopping in:

1. Nassau, Bahamas
2. Tampa, FL
3. St. Thomas, USVI

Due to the price of fuel, we can’t go as far afield as was possible in previous years, which is why we’re not too far into the Caribbean, let alone South America or Europe.