MSNBC is reporting that the Pentagon says the crew has retaken the ship. They have a pirate in custody.

Since very few container vessels have US registration. It's surprising that this one *is*, but Maersk Line is kinda unusual:

Maersk Line, Limited is based in Norfolk, Virginia, and is one of the Department of Defense's primary shipping contractors. It has been a reliable partner for the government in peacetime and war for almost 30 years. The company operates vessels registered in the United States in full compliance with U.S. laws and regulations. It manages a fleet of nearly 50 ships in commercial and government service, including vessels requiring Top Secret security clearances. Maersk Line, Limited, a subsidiary of Denmark's A.P. Moller/Maersk A.S., is independently controlled by a board of directors comprised entirely of U.S. citizens.

However, everyone knows US crew staff container vessels because they're good. Also, merchant marines are part of the military (they have academies, and everything; [insert fact that MM's disportionately died in WWII compared to other services here].

Oh, here's another interesting bit:

Audacious fraudsters repeatedly scammed AP Moller-Maersk out of millions of dollars in a series of bogus shipping contracts, says the Danish liner giant. In May 2005 Maersk was now in US courts chasing $24.95m in treble damages. A federal court has ordered up to that amount attached as it wires its way through New York banks to the defendants in the case, including Arwen Singh Sahni and his family members and associates. Those behind the scheme, many of them described as Kuwait-based Indian nationals, are also said to have pulled a separate, simultaneous con of a similar scale on unnamed other lines. The complex scheme involved shipping low-value goods on fraudulent, high-value bills of lading and then suing Maersk for the apparent loss of merchandise that never existed, according to papers filed with the Southern District of New York federal court. The alleged con artists even succeeded in getting a Maersk containership, the geared, 1,100-teu Alva Maersk (now the US-flag Maersk Alabama , built 1998), arrested in Kuwait to satisfy their claims. Maersk had to put up a $1.86m bank guarantee in April 2004 to get the ship released.

So, the pirates we're more familiar with -- international banksters -- had their way with the Alabama, too.