The family of US Captain Richard Phillips, taken hostage by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, describe him as a man devoted to his family and to the sea.
His wife, Andrea Phillips, said she was waiting for a "happy ending", speaking from the couple's farmhouse in the village of Underhill in the north-eastern state of Vermont.
"I have faith in my husband," Mrs Phillips told local television station WCAX.
"He'll do well to keep everybody safe and himself safe. You know, he's a smart man and I know he'll be all right."
She said her husband - who graduated from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in 1979 - has been sailing for more than 20 years.
A spokesman for the cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, has said there is no indication that the father of two, who is in his early 50s, has been harmed.
Relatives said Capt Phillips offered himself as a hostage to the pirates in order to save his crew.
"That is what he would do. It's just who he is and his response as a captain," his sister-in-law Gina Coggio told ABC's Good Morning America.
His mother-in-law described him as "a really good father, husband and provider".
"His business is serious to him when he's out to sea, but at home he's a lot of fun," Catherine Coggio, 79, told the Boston Herald newspaper.
She said the "beautiful sunrises and sunsets" had drawn him to the sea, but that he is also an avid skier and football fan.
A neighbour told the paper he "works like a beaver" on his house when he is not at sea.
The couple's two children are both at college in the New England area.
Mrs Phillips, a registered nurse, said she is "always concerned" about the possible dangers of her husband's work.
She said her husband had mentioned increasing piracy in a recent e-mail, in which he told her that he was heading to the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
"I had always hoped it wasn't going to happen to us," she said.
She said she was waiting for word from her husband, who is being held on a lifeboat by pirates some 500km (311 miles) off Somalia's coast.
She told the Boston Herald she would be able to say more about the hostage ordeal "when we have a happy ending".
Source: BBC
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