Harrison Okene's Story: 3 Days of Survival in an Airbag on a Sinking Ship. — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00The Atlantic is a patient beast, vast
2. 0:02and indifferent. On a cool July night in
3. 0:062013, 12 miles off the coast of Nigeria,
4. 0:10it was gathering its strength. Harrison
5. 0:12O'keen knew this water well. He was the
6. 0:15cook aboard the Jascon 4, a powerful
7. 0:18anchor handling tugboat. The work was
8. 0:21grinding but routine. Tonight, they were
9. 0:24towing an oil tanker through the chop.
10. 0:27He was in the galley at 4:30 a.m.
11. 0:30preparing a meal that no one would ever
12. 0:31eat. The weather had been souring for
13. 0:34hours, waves growing into dark, bruising
14. 0:37shapes against the hull. The feeling did
15. 0:39not start with a violent crash. It began
16. 0:42with an unnatural tilt, a slow,
17. 0:45agonizing list that felt fundamentally
18. 0:48wrong. The groaning of the ship's metal
19. 0:50rose to a piercing shriek. Before anyone
20. 0:53could react, a colossal rogue wave
21. 0:56slammed the Jascon 4 sideways. The 4,000
22. 1:00ton vessel was immediately overwhelmed.
23. 1:03Inside the galley, everything [music]
24. 1:05erupted into chaos. O'Ne was thrown
25. 1:09violently across the room as the ship's
26. 1:11internal geometry warped around him.
27. 1:13Water, black and frigid, surged in
28. 1:16through broken windows and hatches. The
29. 1:19world turned upside down. Literally, he
30. 1:22felt the crushing pressure of the sea
31. 1:24[music] as the tugboat began its rapid,
32. 1:26irreversible descent. There was no time
33. 1:29to think, only to react. Oken was a
34. 1:32powerful swimmer. But this was not
35. 1:35swimming. This was wrestling with a
36. 1:37sinking structure. He fought his way
37. 1:40toward [music] the chief engineer's
38. 1:41office, hoping to find a hatch or a way
39. 1:43out. Then came the final plunge. The
40. 1:47lights died. The world became absolute
41. 1:50[music] suffocating darkness. The noise
42. 1:53was unimaginable. The sound of 12 men
43. 1:55screaming, the grinding [music] screech
44. 1:57of metal buckling, the violent rush of
45. 2:00water filling every cavity. Okain was
46. 2:03trapped in an internal hallway, swimming
47. 2:06blindly downwards, following a faint
48. 2:08sense of where the high point might be
49. 2:10in this submerged nightmare. The salt
50. 2:13water was already biting [music] into
51. 2:14his skin and the pressure in his ears
52. 2:17was terrifying. He hit something hard, a
53. 2:20closed door. He pushed through it and
54. 2:23suddenly, [music]
55. 2:24mercifully, he found it. A pocket of
56. 2:27air. It was not a large space. He had
57. 2:31stumbled into the engineer's changing
58. 2:32[music] room, a small section near the
59. 2:34stern. As the boat settled, [music]
60. 2:37inverted 30 m beneath the surface, a
61. 2:40small volume of air had been compressed
62. 2:42[music] into the highest point of the
63. 2:43room. He estimated it was barely 4 ft of
64. 2:47vertical space above the water line,
65. 2:49maybe 6 ft wide. He hauled himself onto
66. 2:52a thin metal ledge, shivering
67. 2:54uncontrollably.
68. 2:56The air smelled of diesel, hydraulic
69. 2:58fluid, and terror. He listened to the
70. 3:01sounds of the dying ship. For a long
71. 3:04time, there was only the sound of
72. 3:05rushing water settling, dripping,
73. 3:07[music] and the terrible silence that
74. 3:09followed. The silence that told him he
75. 3:12was utterly alone.
76. 3:14All 11 other crew members were gone. The
77. 3:18first few hours were dominated by panic.
78. 3:20He screamed until his throat was raw,
79. 3:23knowing that sound could not escape the
80. 3:25steel coffin surrounding him. He beat
81. 3:28his fists against the hull, hoping for a
82. 3:30[music] miracle, for a ship to be
83. 3:32passing overhead. The water was
84. 3:34impossibly cold. It soaked his worklos,
85. 3:38leeching the warmth from his body.
86. 3:40Hypothermia began its slow, deliberate
87. 3:43attack. He realized he could not stay on
88. 3:46the metal ledge forever. He would
89. 3:48eventually have to sit with his lower
90. 3:50body submerged in the 70° water just to
91. 3:53save his remaining energy. The darkness
92. 3:55was the worst torment. It was not just
93. 3:58the absence of light. It was a physical
94. 4:01weight, a suffocating blanket that
95. 4:03pressed against his eyeballs. He could
96. 4:06not see his own hand inches from his
97. 4:08face. This was not a movie. [music]
98. 4:10There was no emergency beacon, no source
99. 4:12of light, no radio, only the groaning
100. 4:16and popping of the tugboat structure
101. 4:18fighting the crushing pressure of the
102. 4:20sea.
103. 4:21Day one passed in a haze of freezing
104. 4:23tremors and mounting despair. Thirst
105. 4:27became a physical agonizing force. He
106. 4:30was surrounded by a thousand metric tons
107. 4:32of water. Yet none of it was drinkable.
108. 4:35His lips cracked and his tongue swelled.
109. 4:38He knew [music] if he panicked, he would
110. 4:40waste the precious oxygen in his tiny
111. 4:42bubble. He began rationing his breaths,
112. 4:46moving only minimally. Fear was his
113. 4:48constant companion. Every sound was
114. 4:51magnified by the surrounding water, the
115. 4:54tapping of debris, the settling of the
116. 4:56wreck, the sound of tiny sea creatures
117. 4:59brushing against the hull. He was
118. 5:01convinced that the air pocket was slowly
119. 5:03shrinking, that the massive volume of
120. 5:06water above would eventually push the
121. 5:08last breath out of his reach. Then there
122. 5:11were the shadows. [music] He knew they
123. 5:13were not real, but in the absolute
124. 5:15darkness, his mind conjured [music]
125. 5:17shapes darker than the dark, moving just
126. 5:21beyond the edge of his submerged feet.
127. 5:23He was sitting in the changing room. He
128. 5:25knew where the lockers were. What if
129. 5:28something had floated in? What if the
130. 5:30marine life, drawn by the smell of
131. 5:32diesel or by the corpses nearby, had
132. 5:35found their way in? He fought [music]
133. 5:37the urge to close his eyes, fearing that
134. 5:39if he slept, he might never wake up, or
135. 5:42worse, he might wake up to the air
136. 5:44bubble having collapsed.
137. 5:46Day two arrived, indistinguishable from
138. 5:49day one. Time had ceased to exist. It
139. 5:53was just [music] cold, thirst, and
140. 5:55darkness. Oen was reciting verses from
141. 5:58the Bible, repeating the Lord's Prayer
142. 6:00hundreds of times. He was preparing to
143. 6:03meet his god. Above the waves, the
144. 6:06search [music] was grim. After 48 hours,
145. 6:10the vessel owners had dispatched a
146. 6:11specialized dive [music] team from South
147. 6:13Africa. Their mission was explicitly
148. 6:16stated. [music] It was a recovery
149. 6:18operation. They were looking for bodies.
150. 6:22No one survived a capsize at 30 m after
151. 6:242 days. It was simply impossible. The
152. 6:28team, led by a seasoned diver named
153. 6:30Tony, began the dangerous descent into
154. 6:33[music] the unstable wreck. The
155. 6:35visibility was poor, thick with silt
156. 6:38stirred up by the disaster. They started
157. 6:41documenting [music] the gruesome scene.
158. 6:43They swam through the ship's hallways,
159. 6:45finding the bodies of O'keen's crew
160. 6:47mates, twisted and trapped in the
161. 6:49wreckage. Each recovery was handled with
162. 6:52practiced semnity.
163. 6:54They were near the engine room, moving
164. 6:56slowly through a passage, confirming
165. 6:59that all life was extinct. Tony was
166. 7:02filming the wreckage with a helmet
167. 7:03camera, documenting the structural
168. 7:06damage. The silence 30 m down is
169. 7:08profound, broken only by the hiss of the
170. 7:11divers's regulators and the muffled
171. 7:13sounds of their own movements. And then
172. 7:16a sound, a dull metallic talk. Tony
173. 7:21stopped. His regulator paused. He
174. 7:24signaled to his partner. Did you hear
175. 7:26that? Silence. Just the hiss. He
176. 7:30continued moving. Talk. Talk. It was
177. 7:34rhythmic. [music] It was deliberate.
178. 7:36Tony signaled frantic confusion and
179. 7:39horror to his partner. What was making
180. 7:41that sound? A ghost [music] of the
181. 7:43wreck? Debris shifting? He swam toward
182. 7:46the source of the tapping, pushing
183. 7:48through a hatchway into the engineer's
184. 7:50changing room. His helmet camera,
185. 7:53recording for posterity and evidence,
186. 7:55captured the moment perfectly. He saw a
187. 7:58hand. It was pale, bloated, seemingly
188. 8:02lifeless, drifting barely above the
189. 8:04waterline in the tiny air pocket. Tony
190. 8:07instinctively reached out to touch it,
191. 8:10expecting the cold, rubbery feel of a
192. 8:12corpse, and the hand grabbed him. Okain,
193. 8:15having heard the strange noise of the
194. 8:17[music] divers outside, had used the
195. 8:19last of his energy to hammer on the hull
196. 8:21with a metal tool he had found. When the
197. 8:23sound stopped, he waited, stretching his
198. 8:26arm out into the black water. The shock
199. 8:29nearly caused Tony to bolt. He retracted
200. 8:32his hand, shining his powerful dive
201. 8:34[music] light directly into the small
202. 8:35space. There in the narrow beam was
203. 8:39Harrison O'keen. Naked, hypothermic,
204. 8:43eyes wide and red, but undeniably alive.
205. 8:4772 hours, three full days submerged,
206. 8:50surviving on a handful of breaths in a
207. 8:52collapsing steel box. The ensuing rescue
208. 8:55was [music] agonizingly slow. O'keen was
209. 8:58weak and severely distressed. [music]
210. 9:01To bring him up too quickly would kill
211. 9:03him as nitrogen would rapidly bubble
212. 9:05[music] in his blood, a fatal condition
213. 9:07known as the bends. The dive team had to
214. 9:10immediately fit him with a specialized
215. 9:12[music]
216. 9:12helmet and a decompression line, locking
217. 9:15him into the pressurized world [music]
218. 9:16of saturation diving for another 60
219. 9:19hours, gradually raising him back to
220. 9:22[music] the surface meter by painful
221. 9:24meter. When he finally emerged, [music]
222. 9:26blinking into the harsh sunlight, he was
223. 9:29the sole survivor of the Jaskin 4
224. 9:31tragedy. The footage of the moment
225. 9:33[music] of discovery remains one of the
226. 9:35most astonishing pieces of marine
227. 9:37archaeology ever captured. A ghostly
228. 9:40diver meeting a living ghost deep within
229. 9:43the crushing abyss. It is a stark,
230. 9:46chilling testament to the resilience of
231. 9:48the human spirit. Harrison O'en did not
232. 9:51simply survive. He waited out death
233. 9:54trapped in the darkest place on earth
234. 9:56and lived to tell the tale.