Captain: 'I Didn't Think I'd Ever Get Out of That Boat'

Capt. Richard Phillips thought he'd never escape the Somali pirates holding him hostage, MSNBC reports. “I didn't think I'd ever get out of that boat," Phillips tells Matt Lauer in a Today Show interview airing Tuesday. He had resigned himself for the worst. “It was just settling everything, getting ready to die," he says. "You know, saying my last thoughts: Andrea, the kids."

Phillips was rescued April 12 when Navy sharpshooters killed three of the pirates. “What they did was impossible," Phillips says. And it sounds like their help came just in time. The 53-year-old had already tried to escape, and the mood was tense on the lifeboat where he was being held. “There was always a gun on me,” he says. (More Richard Phillips stories.)