Tag Archives: Captain Phillips

WorkBoat Show: Day 1

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After a VERY late night, I drug myself out of bed to check out the WorkBoat Show.

I didn’t really plan on staying up half the night, but I saw on Facebook that a friend and travel writer was going to be in town for a ‘comp trip’. I had met her at a travel writing workshop in Boston a couple of years ago. After messaging back and forth on Facebook before leaving home, we agreed to meet up here in New Orleans after she finished up her work.

Turns out, when I went to meet her, she was in the middle of dinner with the whole group of writers involved on the comp trip. It was an interesting evening, for true! 🙂

I got back to my hotel about 0200 in the morning, but for some reason I just couldn’t sleep. So it was pretty hard to get up and out. Once I did, I walked over to the Convention center for the WorkBoat Show.

In the same Facebook conversation, I learned there was another writer (and fellow blogger who I met at the same workshop)  coming to town for the show. We planned to meet up too. The first thing we wanted to do was to hear Capt Phillips. He was the Keynote speaker.

Remember the Maersk Alabama, the American flagged ship that got attacked by pirates a couple of years ago? Tom Hanks played him in the movie? Yep, that Capt Phillips. He gave a good presentation and we got to ask questions and afterwards have pictures taken with him (I skipped that but my friend got hers done).

As the presentation was ending, I spotted another friend of mine from Kirby Towing. We stopped to say hi on the way out. That’s what I love about these events. I always wind up meeting so many of my old friends. It’s great to catch up and hear what everybody’s been doing. 🙂

I had a couple of hours before the next presentation. My writer friend was doing an interview with a guy from the Deadliest Catch, so I went to wander around a little bit and ran into some other old friends.

Father Sinclair and Doreen from the Apostleship of the Sea. They always have so many good projects going on to help the sailors and the maritime community. Sinclair still sails, but he somehow finds the time to get involved with all kinds of important stuff.

I went to the presentation on mariner health issues. I picked that one since I have a lot of concerns of my own about how the medical standards are getting harder and harder to meet and are being used to throw a lot of us sailors out of our jobs. It seems a lot of the companies want 50 years of experience in a 20 year old body. 🙁

Spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the convention center and checking out  some of the things there that I’m especially interested in. The latest DP systems from Kongsberg, MT, L3, etc.

I met a few more old friends. Hope to spend some more time with them tomorrow in between all the other events. 🙂

Pirates Hauling $400 Million Since ’05 Pocket Little of Booty, Report Shows

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Pirates Hauling $400 Million Since ’05 Pocket Little of Booty, Report Shows | gCaptain

I’m amazed they needed to do a study to learn this! Pirates work for bosses too, just like pirate leader Muse told Tom Hanks in the movie Captain Phillips. 🙁

According to the study, the pirates only get about 0.01 percent of what they manage to collect. The rest goes to the ‘financiers’. Wow!

One of the comments makes an excellent point and its too bad that no one will actually follow up on this idea…

“So! — the real crooks behind this reign of terror at sea are (as elsewhere) the financiers and the companies, who are profiting from the work of their ‘foot-soldiers’.”

‘Captain Phillips’ Torn From the Headlines, But Tells an Old Story

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‘Captain Phillips’ Torn From the Headlines, But Tells an Old Story | gCaptain

I did go see this movie the other day. I thought it was pretty good. Maybe its because I’m a sailor but I REALLY don’t appreciate the way the article tries to make excuses for the pirates. Yeah, they’re poor, so are a lot of other people around the world. That does NOT in any way excuse the violence, kidnappings, beatings, theft, etc of the pirates!

I thought the crew of the Alabama deserved more credit for their actions. It seems Captain Phillips got all the recognition. The crew actually managed to capture the pirate leader and traded him off for their captain. Good job!!

Remember, in the Merchant Marine, we are not allowed to defend ourselves with anything but fire hoses against these thugs with machine guns and RPGs! They still managed to take down a couple of the pirates! Good! I salute them!

I am REALLY sick and tired of hearing about how we can’t be trusted to defend ourselves, we somehow don’t deserve any kind of REAL protection when our companies send us to work in these dangerous waters!

The bigwigs sit in their penthouse air conditioned offices and debate how much we’re worth to them. Can they ‘afford’ to pay our ransom? The ransom payment is just another cost of doing business to them. It’s our LIVES on the line! We’re just out there trying to earn a living and should NOT have to put up with pirate attacks!

Seamen from all over the world are suffering severely from pirate attacks, even for YEARS AFTER they return home! There are HUNDREDS of them being held at this moment! According to the ICC International Maritime Bureau (http://www.icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre/piracynewsafigures), there have been 176 REPORTED incidents including 10 hijackings in 2013 alone!

No one is helping them. No one cares. The world depends on shipping. Over 90% of the worlds trade moves by sea, in the USA its over 95%! Yet, we mariners get a bare minimum of help from the worlds navies. 🙁

Where are the convoys like they had during WWII? Where are the marines who might be assigned to a ship to protect it? Where are the security companies and their trained armed guards??? WHY is there such an issue about giving us the protection we should have before we go anywhere near any pirate infested waters???

The ONLY reason the world even knows (or cares) about Captain Phillips and the Maersk Alabama is because it happened to be an American ship! There have been dozens of ships and HUNDREDS of sailors held in captivity by various pirate groups worldwide.

The pirates holding these mariners are NOT like Johnny Depp! They are mean, abusive, dangerous, desperate men! They have nothing to lose and they mean business!

WHY can’t we get some REAL protection? WHY can’t we at least arm our ships? It’s hard to believe but the powers that be expects us to be able to run away! If that doesn’t work (which it won’t most of the time since most ships are not very fast), then we are supposed to fight off the machine gun toting pirates with nothing but FIRE HOSES! If that doesn’t work (which it doesn’t), then we are supposed to run away and hide (again). The movie did a great job of showing just how effective those tactics are! (Totally useless! But they are the industrys’ ‘best management practice’).

I recommend the movie. It’s good entertainment if nothing else. I hope it’ll be more than that for the people who watch it. I hope it will help get people involved in trying to solve the problems of piracy. I hope it will give people ashore some idea of the things that are still going on out there in our world.

Book Review: A Captains Duty

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http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/Book-Review-A-Captains-Duty-by-Captain-Richard-Phillips-2013-09-09/

OK, I haven’t read this book yet, but it looks like a good one and I’ll be looking for it when I get home. Sailors, merchant ships, pirate attacks, Navy SEAL teams to the rescue, WOW! It should be pretty intense 😉

This is the true story of the attack of the container ship Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates and the response of the crew.

I remember when it happened and I felt like, oh, so NOW people care. Its only because its an American ship. The pirates had been attacking ships for years and holding hundreds of sailors hostage and nobody did diddly til a US ship got attacked. It still pisses me off.

It’s something I never want to be involved in but can relate to for sure. So far, I’ve been lucky. I’ve never been attacked (yet) I’ve gone through the Suez Canal and the Malacca Straits a few times which are both areas with plenty of real life pirates. They’re NOT like Johnny Depp!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the movie with Tom Hanks starring as Captain Phillips of the Maersk Alabama is due out next month. I’ll try to catch it, but the book is always better than the movie IMHO 😉

Let me know how you liked it.

Coast Guard Recognizes WW II Veteran

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Coast Guard Recognizes WW II Veteran.

Sure took ’em long enough! I guess they had to wait til almost all of these poor guys died??! They should have been eligible from the very beginning for all the honors and perks the military got.

I might piss off some military people by saying that, but they probably don’t know the history of the Merchant Marine. They should! The US Merchant Marine has served in every war since before this country was even formed, in fact, without their service in the time of the Revolution, we never would have been able to do squat against Britain!

The Merchant Marine has lost more men in these wars then every other branch of the military. Easy to figure out why when you realize that we were not ever allowed to defend ourselves. Oh yeah, occasionally they would stick a few marines on board with some guns as a half- assed measure of protection, but only during the major wars- WWI and WWII pretty much.

To this day, the Merchant Marine is out there supplying the troops overseas while trying to get around the pirates and they STILL get no recognition from anyone. I hope the new movie with Tom Hanks playing Captain Phillips on the Maersk Alabama gets some attention. Maybe people will appreciate what the sailors go through to get them the everyday things they need.

Here’s a link to the story of the Maersk Alabama…

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Alabama_hijacking

Here’s a link to the movie trailer, it looks pretty good…