He Survived 3 Days Underwater: The Cook Who Shouldn't Be Alive | True Story : Harrison Okene — Transcript
Full transcript
- 0:04he woke up in the dark chest deep in freezing water alone in the wreckage of a sunken ship 30
- 0:11m beneath the ocean's surface around him nothing but silence twisted steel and death 10 of his crew
- 0:19mates were gone there was no light no food just a small pocket of air and the terrifying knowledge
- 0:26that no one was coming this is the story of Harrison O'Kee a man declared dead a man the
- 0:32ocean tried to bury and yet for 3 days he fought the cold the fear and the crushing pressure of the
- 0:38deep until the impossible happened he survived and against all odds he lived to tell the sea was calm
- 0:48in the early hours of May 26th 2013 off the coast of Nigeria the Jaskan 4 tugboat floated steadily
- 0:56in the dark waters of the Atlantic 11 men were on board assigned to support offshore oil operations
- 1:03they had done this many times before there was nothing unusual that morning below deck the cook
- 1:10Harrison O'Ne was already awake he liked to start early at around 4:30 a.m while most of the crew
- 1:17still slept he stepped into the bathroom to get ready for another day the hallway was quiet the
- 1:23only sound was the faint hum of the ship's generators and then without warning the ship
- 1:29jolted violently a massive wave unexpected and sudden struck the Jaskan 4 broadside the impact
- 1:37was catastrophic within seconds the vessel rolled sharply and capsized flipping completely upside
- 1:43down in open sea the lights cut out everything went black harrison was thrown off balance the
- 1:51small bathroom he was in quickly became a death trap salt water poured in the room turned sideways
- 1:58pressure built screams could be heard but only for a few seconds then they were gone in the
- 2:05chaos Harrison made a split-second decision that saved his life he forced the bathroom door open
- 2:11and dove into the flooded hallway swimming blindly everything was disorienting the ship
- 2:17was upside down gravity was meaningless the water was ice cold and there was no visibility somehow
- 2:25guided only by instinct and memory he found his way into the engineer's office a compartment
- 2:30now half flooded completely dark but miraculously holding a small pocket of air he surfaced gasping
- 2:38he had no idea where he was or how long the air would last he only knew one thing he was alive
- 2:45he climbed onto a floating mattress his legs still submerged in salt water every inch of his
- 2:51skin was soaked the air was humid and metallic it stank of diesel oil and decay he called out
- 2:59he screamed into the void he banged on the walls with pipes metal rods anything he could find but
- 3:06there was no response only silence slowly he began to take in his surroundings he was in a
- 3:13space no larger than a walk-in closet flipped on its side in total darkness the water lapped
- 3:19just below his chest the ceiling now the floor creaked and shifted with every underwater current
- 3:26there was no light no phone no radio no way out as the hours passed the cold became unbearable
- 3:35the salt water began to strip the outer layer of his skin his legs submerged the entire time
- 3:41began to swell and blister he had nothing to eat nothing to drink until he found a single can of
- 3:48soda floating nearby his only nourishment for the next 3 days by nightfall reality began to sink in
- 3:56no one was coming he realized that unless someone knew he was down there he was going to die not
- 4:02from drowning but from thirst hypothermia or slow asphyxiation still he refused to give up he prayed
- 4:10over and over he recited Psalm 54 from memory oh God save me by your name and vindicate me by your
- 4:18might on the second day his body began to weaken he could barely move the cold burned deeper his
- 4:25breath became shorter he was inhaling high levels of carbon dioxide recycled over and over in that
- 4:32tight humid space then the hallucinations began he heard voices some angry some kind he heard
- 4:39footsteps above him he imagined someone calling his name he thought he saw light under the door
- 4:46but when he opened his eyes nothing just pitch black water and the creaking of the ship's remains
- 4:53on the third day something changed a sound different from the rest rhythmic and metallic
- 4:59tapping then bubbles was divers but they weren't there to rescue him they had come to recover
- 5:06bodies as the diver scanned the corridor with his flashlight he entered the engineer's office then
- 5:13a hand reached out harrison had positioned himself at the edge of the air pocket hoping someone might
- 5:19pass when he saw the divers's light he plunged his arm into the water and grabbed him the diver
- 5:26jerked back at first he thought it was a dead body but when the hand gripped tighter he froze this
- 5:32wasn't a body was a man alive the diver screamed "Survivor we have a survivor." What followed was
- 5:41a carefully coordinated rescue harrison was fitted with a diving mask and brought out slowly but he
- 5:48couldn't be taken to the surface right away after nearly 62 hours underwater his blood
- 5:54was saturated with nitrogen surfacing too quickly would kill him he was placed in a decompression
- 6:00chamber for over 60 hours more doctors monitored his vitals constantly when he finally emerged
- 6:07he had survived over 5 days between the wreck and the chamber the world called it a miracle
- 6:13but Harrison simply called it grace harrison O'Kee never returned to the sea after surviving
- 6:22something that no one should he left that world behind the ocean that nearly became his grave
- 6:28is now a memory he carries quietly every single day he still has scars from the saltwater burns
- 6:35and sometimes when it rains heavily or the power goes out at night he says he can feel
- 6:40the darkness pressing in again just like it did 30 m under but Harrison is alive he wakes
- 6:47up each morning with gratitude holds his wife a little closer prays a little longer because he
- 6:53knows something most people never will he knows what it means to be forgotten and found to feel
- 6:59death reach for you and slip away to survive not just by luck but by will this wasn't just
- 7:06a story about being trapped underwater it was a story about holding on when there's nothing left
- 7:12to hold about hope when all logic says there is none this was the story of Harrison O'en
- 7:19and against every possible odd he lived to tell stories like Harrison's remind us that even in
- 7:26the darkest coldest places hope can survive if this story moved you share it with someone who
- 7:32needs to hear it and don't forget to like and subscribe for more real and inspiring stories
- 7:38of survival resilience and the strength of the human spirit thank you for watching [Laughter]
About this transcript
This page contains the full transcript of He Survived 3 Days Underwater: The Cook Who Shouldn't Be Alive | True Story : Harrison Okene by I Lived to Tell, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 1,175 words across 67 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.
What you can do with it
Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.
Free YouTube transcript tool
YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.