Trapped 33 Meters Underwater — Harrison Okene’s Story

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The story as narrated

I was preparing breakfast for the crew at four in the morning when I stepped into the toilet for a moment. Then I heard someone shout that the vessel was about to capsize. Seconds later, the entire ship flipped upside down. The toilet struck my head. The lights disappeared. Everything was black. I forced the door open and followed the faint light from another crew member’s phone. We tried to open a watertight door, but seawater rushed through the vessel and swept me away. The current pushed me into the second engineer’s cabin. Then the ship hit the seabed, thirty-three meters beneath the ocean. I could hear my crewmates shouting in the darkness. One by one, the voices stopped. I kept trying to find a way out. But every time I swam through the flooded vessel, I nearly lost my way back to the place where I could breathe. So I made a rope from pieces of fabric and tied it to a water dispenser. That rope became my guide through the darkness. The water was freezing. I built a small platform from anything I could find so I could keep part of my body above the water. I had almost nothing to eat or drink. I found a little sardine and Coca-Cola and rationed what I had. I prayed. I waited. I had no idea how much time had passed. Then, almost three days later, I saw something in the water. A flashlight. Bubbles. A diver. I swam toward him and tapped his helmet. He turned around and saw me. I was alive. The divers had entered the wreck expecting to recover bodies. Instead, they found the only survivor. They gave me breathing equipment and brought me into a diving bell before taking me to a decompression chamber. I had survived nearly three days trapped thirty-three meters beneath the ocean.

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