A captain's duty

摘要

For the first time Captain Richard Phillip's wife, Andrea, did not wait to see her husband's plane leave as he set off to join the l000teu containership Maersk Alabama in Salalah, Oman. She was running late and had to get to the hospital where she worked as an emergency room nurse, Captain Phillips told delegates at the International Association of Ports and Harbours World Ports Conference in Los Angeles in May. It was a small but important fact that he said would come back to haunt him during the lowest periods of the four days that he was held captive by Somali pirates in a lifeboat off the coast of Somalia.