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According to the wife of rescued Captain Richard Phillips. A tearful Andrea Phillips thanked President Barack Obama after she recieved word of the rescue on Sunday. Somali pirates had held Phillips hostage for five days after attempting to board his ship, the Maersk Alabama, in a bizarre and uplifting story.

“You have no idea, but with Richard saved, you all just gave me the best Easter ever,” she said through a spokesperson for the family.

It was the first seizure of a U.S. vessel in almost 200 years, or as my mother put it the first since the time of “Johnny Depp pirates.” Let’s recount the events that led up to Richard Phillips’ heroic rescue.

The Maersk Alabama was a U.S. flagged cargo ship carrying food and aid for Rwanda, Somalia and Uganda. The ship was well prepared for a piracy attack (Phillips and his crew had performed piracy drills to be better prepared for a situation like this) and that likely saved the lives of the entire crew.

When the pirates boarded the ship the captain ordered the crew of 19 to lock themselves in a cabin. Also they disabled their own ship so that the Pirates wouldn’t be able to use it. Phillips then heroically surrendered himself in an effort to save his crew. The four discouraged pirates ditched the Maersk Alabama with the captain and took off into the Indian Ocean in an enclosed lifeboat.

The pirates did have food, water and a radio on their boat, but they didn’t have a lot of fuel. The Navy began to negotiate with the pirates, who were demanding $2 million for the safe return of Richard Phillips.

At this point the pirates had to know they were in trouble. They were out of fuel miles off of the coast in a lifeboat that was being shadowed by three U.S. Navy destroyers and a helicopter. At one point the U.S.S. Bainbridge bumped the lifeboat as it began to float closer to Somali shores and a little bit later the U.S.S. Bainbridge actually had to tow the pirates and their lifeless lifeboat out out of choppy waters.

On Friday Phillips tried to escape by himself, but the pirates were able to recapture him. Vice Admiral William Gortney, the commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said that the Navy had every intention of finding a nonviolent resolution to the situation but that as negotiations soured it was becoming all too clear that the captured captain’s life was in jeopardy.

One of the pirates, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, surrendered on Sunday. He had been stabbed with an icepick during the boarding of the Maersk Alabama on Wednesday and needed medical attention. Where the captured pirate will be tried has yet to be determined. If he goes to trial in the United States he will likely face life in prison. Both piracy and hostage-taking carry life prison sentences under U.S. law.

President Obama gave the go ahead to take the pirates out twice on Sunday. The Navy Seal snipers, who were on board the U.S.S. Bainbridge within a hundred feet of the lifeboat, got the official ok after one of the pirates had pointed his AK-47 at Phillips back. Within seconds they simultaneously fired on the three remaining pirates, killing all of them.

Phillips was then rescued after four long days in the lifeboat and is reportedly in good health and good spirits.

After his rescue sailors on the U.S.S. Bainbridge presented him with a note from his wife that read “Your family is saving a chocolate Easter egg for you, unless your son eats it first.”

He will return home to his family on Tuesday.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that all four of the pirates were between the ages of 17 and 19.

“Untrained teenagers with heavy weapons,” Gates told a group of students and faculty at the Marine Corps War College. “Everybody in the room knows the consequences of that.”

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