Trapped Seventy Two Hours Under Water in a Sunken Boat

A visual reconstruction of Harrison Okene inside the overturned tugboat after it sank off the Nigerian coast. (Digital Illustration: GoBeyondLocal)

Trapped Seventy Two Hours Under Water in a Sunken Boat

At about five in the morning on May 26, 2013, Harrison Okene was inside the Jascon-4 when the tugboat began to turn over.

Okene was the cook aboard the vessel, which was working near an offshore oil platform off the Nigerian coast. He was in the toilet when the movement started. The vessel tilted rapidly, water rushed through the interior and the lights disappeared.

He forced open the metal door and tried to get out. Water was already moving through the boat with enough force to sweep people away.

Okene felt his way through the darkness as the tugboat rolled beneath the Atlantic. He could not reach an emergency exit. Water rose around him, and the space inside the vessel became harder to recognise as the boat settled upside down.

He moved towards another part of the interior and was swept into a cabin. The water did not fill the upper part of that space. Above the surface, Okene found a pocket of air.

He had only his boxer shorts on. Salt water surrounded him, and the cold reached his body as he crouched inside the small dry space.

Outside that pocket, the tugboat had sunk to the seabed about 30 metres below the surface. Eleven other crew members died in the sinking.

There was no way for Okene to climb out of the wreck. The water around him was dark, and the air above his head was limited.

He waited inside the cabin and prayed. His wife had previously sent him a psalm by text message, and he recited the words while the hours passed in darkness.

Hunger soon became a problem, but thirst was worse. Okene later described the salt water entering his mouth and the effect it had on his tongue. He had nothing to eat or drink inside the wreck.

The air pocket also gave him little room to move. He had to remain in the confined space while the vessel sat upside down on the ocean floor.

Above the wreck, people were searching for the missing crew. Divers went down to the tugboat to recover bodies, with no expectation that a living person was still inside.

Inside the cabin, Okene had no way to know how long the search would take or whether anyone had realised that he could still be alive.

The hours accumulated. Okene was still breathing from the air trapped above the water, but the available air was being used in a space with little room for escape.

His body was soaked. The temperature had fallen, and his skin had begun to suffer from prolonged contact with salt water.

By the time divers entered the wreck, they had already recovered several bodies. Their work took them through the dark interior of the overturned tugboat, checking spaces where crew members might have been trapped.

One diver moved through a passageway and saw what appeared to be a hand.

The diver reached towards it.

The hand reached back.

It belonged to Okene.

The discovery stopped the recovery work. The diver had found a living man nearly three days after the sinking, deep inside a wreck lying on the seabed.

Okene was still inside the small pocket of air. The rescuers now had to get him out without exposing him too quickly to the pressure difference between the wreck and the surface.

The divers connected Okene to their equipment and guided him through the wreck. He was taken into a diving bell, where the ascent could be controlled.

The process took time because bringing someone from that depth to the surface too quickly could cause serious medical problems.

After spending about 72 hours underwater, Okene reached the surface alive.

He was taken for medical treatment after being brought out of the water. The man who had entered the Jascon-4 as its cook had survived inside an air pocket while the wreck sat on the ocean floor.