in freezing cold water in the Atlantic Ocean. The tugboat he was on
capsizedoff the Nigerian coast while stabilizing an oil tanker.
After two days trapped in freezing coldwater and breathing from an air
bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure
hewas going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness.
Ship's cook Okene, 29, was on board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it
capsized on May 26 due to heavy Atlantic oceanswells around 20 miles
off the coast ofNigeria, while stabilizing an oil tanker filling up at
a Chevron platform.
Of the 12 people on board, divers recovered 10 dead bodies while a
remaining crew member has not been found.
Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a four foot high bubble of
air asit shrunk in the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the
tiny toilet and adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two
South African divers eventually rescued him.
"I was there in the water in total darkness just thinking it's the
end. I kept thinking the water was going to fill up the room but it
did not," Okene said, parts of his skin peeling away after days
soaking in the salt water.
"I was so hungry but mostly so, so thirsty. The salt water took the
skin off my tongue," he said. Seawater got intohis mouth but he had
nothing to eat ordrink throughout his ordeal.
At 4:50 a.m. on May 26, Okene says hewas in the toilet when he
realized the tugboat was beginning to turn over. Aswater rushed in and
the Jascon-4 flipped, he forced open the metal door.
"As I was coming out of the toilet it was pitch black so we were
trying to link our way out to the water tidal (exit hatch)," Okene
told Reuters in his home town of Warri, a city in Nigeria's
oil-producing Niger Delta.
"Three guys were in front of me and suddenly water rushed in full
force. I saw the first one, the second one, the third one just washed
away. I knew these guys were dead."
What he didn't know was that he would spend the next two and a half
days trapped under the sea praying he would be found.
Turning away from his only exit, Okenewas swept along a narrow
passageway by surging water into another toilet, this time adjoining a
ship's officers cabin, as the overturned boat crashed onto the ocean
floor. To his amazement he was still breathing.
FISH FEASTED ON THE DEAD
Okene, wearing only his underpants, survived around a day in the four
foot square toilet, holding onto the overturned washbasin to keep his
headout of the water.
He built up the courage to open the door and swim into the officer's
bedroom and began pulling off the wall paneling to use as a tiny raft
to lift himself out of the freezing water.
He sensed he was not alone in the darkness.
"I was very, very cold and it was black.I couldn't see anything," says
Okene, staring into the middle distance.
"But I could perceive the dead bodies of my crew were nearby. I could
smell them. The fish came in and began eating the bodies. I could hear
the sound. It was horror."
What Okene didn't know was a team ofdivers sent by Chevron and the
ship's owners, West African Ventures, were searching for crew members,
assumed by now to be dead.
Then in the afternoon of May 28, Okene heard them.
"I heard a sound of a hammer hitting the vessel. Boom, boom, boom. I
swamdown and found a water dispenser. I pulled the water filter and I
hammeredthe side of the vessel hoping someone would hear me. Then the
diver must have heard a sound."
Divers broke into the ship and Okene saw light from a head torch of
someone swimming along the passageway past the room.
"I went into the water and tapped him.I was waving my hands and he was
shocked," Okene said, his relief still visible.
He thought he was at the bottom of the sea, although the company says
it was 30 meters below.
The diving team fitted Okene with an oxygen mask, diver's suit and
helmet and he reached the surface at 19:32, more than 60 hours after
the ship sank,he says.
Okene says he spent another 60 hours in a decompression chamber where
his body pressure was returned to normal. Had he just been exposed
immediatelyto the outside air he would have died.
The cook describes his extraordinary survival story as a "miracle" but
the memories of his time in the watery darkness still haunt him and he
is not sure he will return to the sea.
"When I am at home sometimes it feels like the bed I am sleeping in is
sinking. I think I'm still in the sea again. I jump up and I scream,"
Okenesaid, shaking his head.
"I don't know what stopped the water from filling that room. I was
calling on God. He did it. It was a miracle."
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