Richard Phillips, captain in AprilPaul M. Rochford, captain on Wednesday

AP / Toby Talbot AP

BARRINGTON

Had it not been for his father’s end-of-life illness, longtime Barrington resident Paul M. Rochford would have been at the helm of the Maersk Alabama, a U.S.-flagged cargo ship, when Somali pirates attacked it in April.

Instead, a Massachusetts Maritime Academy classmate of Rochford’s –– Richard Phillips –– had taken over as captain so Rochford could travel home and visit with his father in the Barrington home where he grew up.

Two weeks later, Rochford’s sister Amy says, the ship was attacked. Pirates held Phillips hostage at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five tense days.

Early Wednesday morning, though, Rochford was back on the Maersk Alabama when Somali pirates attacked the ship again, this time with automatic weapons, about 350 nautical miles east of the Somali coast. Guards on board fired back and thwarted the hijacking by employing different tactics, according to the president of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Adm. Richard G. Gurnon.

“The outcome this time was very different because of the lessons learned from the original attack,” Gurnon said.

Rochford has been sailing since he graduated with Phillips in 1979, said Gurnon, who characterized Rochford as a very experienced captain.

In Barrington, Rochford’s wife, Kimberly Rochford, said she and their daughter, Madison, 17, learned of the attack on the morning news, turned to the Internet for more information and were relieved to hear the crew had managed to fend off the pirates.

His sister Amy also learned of the attack Wednesday morning, when the phone woke her up. In moments, Amy learned of the attack and that her brother was fine.

“I never had a chance to be upset,” she said.

In the home where she lives with her mother, Amy gestured immediately to the print above a sofa of a whaling ship from New Bedford. The Rochford family has strong ties to the ocean.

Amy and Paul’s great-grandfather on their mother’s side, Thomas Wilson, was captain of that ship –– the James Arnold –– in the late 1800s, Amy said.

Their father spent his last summer days in this home with an ocean view that he shared with his wife for 48 years.

Paul was there with their father near the end, Amy said.

“My father was alive and cognizant and knew Paul was going to be going out to sea any day,” she said.

But then Paul returned to the ship he has captained for a number of years, Amy Rochford said.

Just after he left, their father’s health deteriorated as lung disease took over his body, she said. Thankfully, his sister says, the Maersk Alabama had reached the African coast when their father died, and he was able to learn of his father’s death directly from his family.

It is not lost on Amy Rochford that her brother came close to being the one thrust into the limelight by that first pirate attack on the ship in April. Navy SEAL sharpshooters freed Phillips and killed three pirates in a daring nighttime attack on the kidnappers. Phillips has not been back to sea, according to Gurnon.

“[Paul] had been the captain,” Amy Rochford said of her brother. “It would have been him, so this is nothing.”

During that attack, Chief Officer Shane Murphy of Seekonk, also a graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, was aboard the ship.

Neither Phillips nor Murphy was aboard the Maersk Alabama during Wednesday’s attack.

As it was in April, the ship operated by Danish company Maersk Lines was transporting food this week into Mombasa, Kenya, as part of the U.S. relief effort into Africa, Gurnon said. It has probably made the same roundtrip 10 times since April, Gurnon said.

Pirate activity has picked up in the region with the passing of the monsoon season, according to Murphy’s father, Capt. Joseph S. Murphy II, who teaches an anti-piracy course at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. The calm weather enables pirates in small boats to travel “a considerable distance out to sea” to take on the big ships, he said.

“Unfortunately, 80 percent of the ships that traffic in those areas are still unprotected,” he said.

Providing some insight as to how the Maersk crew repelled the attack, Gurnon spoke of the security crew and their use of a high-decibel noise device, which can beam earsplitting alarm tones, and firearms.

“In the maritime trade, they say: Fire a shot across the bow — and that’s meant to scare people off,” Gurnon said. “You don’t intend to hit them.”

That would be enough of a warning for innocent fishermen who had gotten too close to a cargo ship. The firing likely produced the same reaction from the pirates, Gurnon said.

“The pirates said, ‘Oooh-whee, this is not an easy target,’ ” he speculated. “ ‘Let’s move along. We’ll get the next ship.’ ”

On Monday, a self-proclaimed pirate said Somali hijackers had been paid $3.3 million for the release of 36 crew members from a Spanish vessel held for more than six weeks — a clear demonstration of how lucrative the trade can be for impoverished Somalis.

Before the April attack on the Maersk Alabama, crews rarely carried guns aboard their ships, Gurnon said. They just bought kidnap and ransom insurance, he said.

But now, companies are increasingly negotiating with port agents to carry weapons aboard as they move around the Horn of Africa in one of the busiest and most precarious sea lanes in the world.

“The definition of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over but expect different results,” Gurnon said. “If all you buy is kidnap and ransom insurance, and the Somali pirates have a business model that works for them, you’re going to buy kidnap and ransom insurance forever.”

In Barrington, Capt. Rochford’s family expects him home soon because of the attack. Amy Rochford has a hopeful eye on next Thursday.

“It would be nice to have him home for the holidays,” she said.

With reports from Journal Staff Writer Tom Mooney, projo.com producer Jack Perry and The Associated Press

BIO Paul M. Rochford

AGE: 52

HOMETOWN: Barrington

EDUCATION: Graduated from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, Mass., in 1979.

CURRENT JOB: Captain of the Maersk Alabama, the U.S.-flagged cargo ship that was attacked Wednesday by Somali pirates for the second time in seven months

FAMILY: Son of Barrington resident Patricia Clavin Rochford and her late husband, Paul R. Rochford, who died in August. Paul M. Rochford is the oldest of five children and the great-grandson of Thomas Wilson, who was captain of a whaling ship out of New Bedford, Mass., in the late 1800s.

Shane Murphy of Seekonk,

chief officer of the Maersk Alabama when pirates seized the ship in April, is asked to help establish a Somali Coast Guard. A2

kbramson@projo.com