The USS Bainbridge, an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer, is in place and prepared to assist in the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, who is being held hostage by the Somali pirates who attacked the cargo ship Maersk Alabama on April 8th.

The crew of the Maersk Alabama recaptured their ship from the pirates, but their captain remained in the hands of the Somalis.

“There’s four Somali pirates, and they’ve got our captain,” Ken Quinn said in a ship-to-shore phone interview.

Capt. Richard Phillips is being held in the Alabama’s 28-foot lifeboat after the pirates reneged on an agreement to exchange him for a captured pirate, Quinn said.  “We returned him (the pirate), but they didn’t return the captain,” he said. 

The hijackers forcefully boarded the Alabama early Wednesday, when it was about 350 miles off the coast of Somalia, a failed nation which has become a haven for pirates  who have now attacked over 160 merchant vessels in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

The dispatch of the USS Bainbridge to rescue Captain Murphy is an unusual example of historical justice.  The ship is named after Commodore William Bainbridge, a hero of the Barbary Pirates War who was himself held hostage twice.