On the 10th (the day after Philips escape attempt) CNN cited an unnamed "US defense official" confirming that Bainbridge is [present tense] "within a few hundred yards" of the lifeboat, but the CNN report does not specify when "is" was. Is this a reference to the time of Philips' escape attempt, which several sources are reporting as occurring within a few hundred yards of the Bainbridge?

CNN report here (my copy here).

The New York Daily News said that Philips: "hoped to swim the few hundred yards to the warship Bainbridge."

So did ABC, which included an elaborate animation of the escape attempt, which depicted the Bainbridge about a hundred yards of the lifeboat.

 

Their print story says:

Around midnight, Phillips leaped off and began swimming for freedom, officials told ABC News. The U.S. destroyer Bainbridge is anchored a few hundred yards away. [My copy here.]

Which cannot be completely accurate because there is no way the Bainbridge was anchored, which first of all makes no sense (or how could it maintain any kind of position with respect to the unanchored life boat, and second is contradicted by contemporaneous pictures, showing the Bainbridge and the lifeboat both motoring at slow speed about 2 hundred yards apart at 6AM on the morning of the incident (which if it was not the exact time of the incident, was not long after).

 

Navy News Service photographs of the USS Bainbridge and the Maersk-Alabama lifeboat containing Captain Philips and the four pirates

The Navy News Service "Current Collection" photo pages showing the Bainbridge and the lifeboat on the morning of Captain Philips escape attempt (4-9-09) are here and here. If these pages ever disappear, my copies are here and here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to Philips rescue post at my Error Theory blog

Crescent of Betrayal, main page

Free download of Crescent of Betrayal, the Director's Cut.