James Stout

So, like, kind of flick it, and that didn't work.

And one member of the ship's crew who hid himself

with a knife and successfully subdued and captured the leader of the pirates.

And the crew then attempted to trade this person for their captain.

They tied up the pirate who they had captured, attempted to trade him for their captain.

The pirates...

took the leader of the pirates and then never gave the crew their captain, and then made off in a lifeboat with a large amount of cash and the captain.

This resulted in a standoff.

Now, the Maersk, Alabama was, I believe, a US-flagged ship.

It may have been a US-Dutch ship, but it was flagged to a nation in the global north.

This will become relevant later.

The United States sent two boats, which proceeded to engage in a standoff with the lifeboat for several days, where they first attempted to drop a sat phone and a mobile phone to the pirates in the lifeboat.

The pirates threw those in the ocean because they thought that they were using them to communicate with the captain of the ship.

At one point, the captain who they'd held hostage ended up in the ocean, but then he got back into the lifeboat.

The situation was resolved eventually by the Navy SEALs shooting all the pirates.

They were based on one of the US ships and they used sniper rifles to shoot the pirates.

Really?

Yeah.

They shot them all off the lifeboat while the captain of the ship was also in the lifeboat.

Whoa.