Survivors at Sea: Selkirk, Alone in a Raft, 480 Meters Underwater | Sea Life, Islands and Oceania

HUMAN SURVIVORS AT SEA

Poon Lim

Japanese captain Oguri Jukichi holds the Guinness World Record for surviving the longest while being adrift at sea. He and one of his sailors survived for 484 days after their soybean-carrying cargo ship, with a crew of about a dozen men, was damaged in a storm off the Japanese coast in October 1813. The two men traveling from the central city of Toba to what is now Tokyo, a distance of about 300 kilometers, but ended up drifting into the Pacific. In March 1815, after more than a year at sea, Jukichi and the one remaining sailor were rescued by an American ship near California. Both men stayed alive on a diet of distilled seawater and soy beans. Other members of the crew that survived the initial storm but died one by one from scurvy. [Source: Sky News, 20 August 2018]

Chinese sailor Poon Lim was the sole survivor of the British merchant ship SS Ben Lomond, which sunk after it was torpedoed by a German submarine in November 1942. Poon managed to climb aboard a wooden raft with small supply of food and water, which he was able to augment with rain water and birds and fish he caught. He survived for 131 day and was ultimately rescued in March 1943 by of Brazilian fisherman at the mouth of the Amazon. Poon holds the record for staying alive the longest, at sea alone in a raft.

Mark Singer wrote in The New Yorker: In 1955, Gabriel García Márquez published a series of newspaper articles depicting the ordeal of Luis Alejandro Velasco, an enlisted man in the Colombian Navy, who, in February of that year, fell overboard in the Caribbean Sea and survived ten days on a life raft, without food or water. (The articles later became a book, “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor.”) Velasco washed ashore a week after having been officially declared dead — the preamble to becoming briefly celebrated as a national hero. The first night: “To make myself less lonely, I looked at the dial of my watch. It was ten minutes to seven. Much later — it seemed as if two or three hours had passed — it was five minutes to seven. When the minute hand reached twelve, it was exactly seven o’clock and the sky was packed with stars. But to me it seemed that so much time had passed, it should now be nearly dawn.” [Source: Mark Singer, The New Yorker, February 11, 2007]

In October 2009, three Japanese men were rescued at sea after spending three days in an upside down capsized boat in seas off Hachijojima island. The men huddled in a small air pocket in a compartment of the 19-ton boat after it was capsized by waves from a typhoon. One survivor told Kyodo, “I was wondering inside the boat how I’d die. And it felt horrible to think about when I might stop breathing.” The three men had little to eat and shared a small amount of water. They were very hungry and slightly dehydrated when they were rescued by the Japanese coast guard. Five other crew men on the boat died.

Websites and Resources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) noaa.gov; “Introduction to Physical Oceanography” by Robert Stewart , Texas A&M University, 2008 uv.es/hegigui/Kasper ; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute whoi.edu ; Cousteau Society cousteau.org ; Monterey Bay Aquarium montereybayaquarium.org

Robinson Crusoe and Alexander Selkirk

Robinson Crusoe illustration from 1894 Czech edition

Daniel Defoe's “Robinson Crusoe” was based on the real-life experience of Scotsman Alexander Selkirk. In 1704 Selkirk was shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific 650 kilometers (400 miles) west of Chile. After he was rescued in 1709 he became a big celebrity. “Robinson Crusoe” is considered one of the first English novels. It third edition went into publication within two months.

Alexander Selkirk (1676-1720), a hot-headed Scotsman and son of shoemaker, ran away to sea and joined a band of buccaneers in 1703. After complaining that the ship he was sailing on was unseaworthy he was put ashore on an cold windswept island west of the coast of Chile in September 1704. During the first eight months of his 4½ year exile he subsisted on gathered roots and berries, water and turtles and fish. Later he decided to adjust the best he could to his environment and fashioned a cup from a coconut shell and hide from an iron hoop. He moved into cave and hunted wild goats, which he sometimes chased down on foot, and sewed their skins for clothing.

Selkirk was better provisioned than Robinson Crusoe. He went to the island on his free will and the island was lush and had plenty of water and food. In January 1709 Selkirk was discovered by a British ship that had been blown off course. When he arrived in England three years later, Selkirk became an instant celebrity and many newspapers published interviews with him. Writer Daniel Defoe used him as the model for his novel "Robinson Crusoe.

Selkirk returned to Scotland but ha trouble readjusting to society. At first Selkirk seemed to adjust to civilization alright but later he became "moody and withdrawn" and eventually moved into a cave near his home town where taught "alley cats to do strange dances." He returned to sea and died of a fever off the African coast.

Account of the Real-Life Robinson Crusoe

The captain of the ship that discovered Selkirk, Woodes Roger, wrote: "Our pinnace return'd from the shore, and brought an abundance of craw-fish with a man cloth'd in goat skins, who look'd wilder that the first owners of them" and speaking "his words by halfs."

"During his stay he saw several ships pass by but only two came in to anchor. As he went to view them he found them to be Spanish and retired from 'em, upon which they shot at him. Had they been French, he would have submitted, but chose to risque dying alone on the Island rather fall into the hands of the Spaniards in these parts, because he apprehended they would murder him, or make a slave of him."

"He had with him his clothes and bedding , with a firelock, some powder, bullets, and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible, some practical pieces, and his mathematical instrument and books."

"He diverted and provided for himself as well as he could; but for the first eight months had much ado to bear up against melancholy and the terror of being left alone in such a desolate place. He built two huts with pimento trees, cover;d them with long grass, and lin'd them with the skins of goats which he killed with his gun...He got fire by rubbing two sticks of pimento together on his knee...and employed himself in reading, singing Psalms, and praying, so that he said he was a better Christian in solitude than he ever was before."

Selkirk’s Life on the Island

According to Woodes Rogers, Selkirk ate "Crawfish, which are there as large as lobsters and very good. These he sometimes boiled, and at other times broiled as he did his goats flesh, of which he made very good broth, for they are not so rank as ours; he kept account of 500 that he'd killed while there...When his powder fail' he took them by speed of foot." He once accidentally chased a goat over a cliff and nearly died from the fall. He lied on the ground stunned for 24 hours before crawling a mile or so back to his hut."

"He soon wore out all of his shoes and clothes by running through the woods; and at last being forced to shift without them, his feet became so hard that he ran everywhere without annoyance...After he conquered his melancholy he diverted himself sometimes by cutting his name on trees."

"He was at first pestered with cats and rats, that had beret in great numbers from some of each species which had gone ashore on ships...The rats gnawed's his feet and clothes while asleep, which obliged him to cherish the cats...by which many of them became so tame that they would lie about him hundreds, and soon delivered him from the rats...He likewise tame'd some kids, and to divert himself would now sing and dance with them and his cats.

"When his clothes wore out he made himself a coat and cap of goatskins, which he stitched together with little Thongs of the same he cut with his knife. He had no other needle but a nail, and when his knife was wore to the back, he made others as well as he could of some iron hoops that were left ashore."

76 Days Adrift in a Raft in the Atlantic

Steven Callahan, who was adrift in the Atlantic Ocean for 76 days in 1982, served as a consultant for Ang Lee’s film “Life of Pi” — about a man and tiger adrift in the sea. “Meredith Blake wrote in the Los Angeles Times: Famously-meticulous Ang Lee originally had planned to hire a survival consultant to infuse the allegorical tale of a boy's oceangoing raft journey with a tiger with a dose of realism. Then he read Steven Callahan's riveting 1986 memoir, "Adrift," detailing his own perilous life-raft adventure in the Atlantic. In Callahan, Ang and screenwriter David Magee saw a guide who understood and could articulate the metaphysical themes they were hoping to explore in the film. "We very quickly realized we were dealing with someone who had more than just passing knowledge in the kind of story we were trying to tell," Magee says. [Source: Meredith Blake, Los Angeles Times, December 31, 2012]

“In January 1982, Callahan — "30 and full of beans" — set sail from Finisterre, Spain, on a solo trek across the Atlantic. Little more than a week into the journey, his 21-foot sloop Napoleon Solo sank in a lonely stretch of the Atlantic some 450 miles west of the Canary Islands. Callahan spent the ensuing 76 days living as an "aquatic caveman" aboard a 6-foot raft he named Rubber Ducky. Food was scarce initially, but as Rubber Ducky drifted along the North Equatorial Current toward the Caribbean, barnacles began to collect on the bottom, attracting small fish and, eventually, an entire school of dorado (mahi mahi). "At first the ocean is crystal clear and empty, and it's like, how am I going to possibly live out here? But after a few days, anything that floats in the ocean develops an island ecology," Callahan said in a phone interview from his home in Maine, where he is battling leukemia. "Life is profound in that way."

“Like Pi and his tiger, Callahan grew unexpectedly attached to his "little doggies," able to recognize an individual fish nudging against the raft "the way you recognize different neighbors' knocks on the back door," he wrote in "Adrift." Nevertheless, he killed one every few days for sustenance, and the fish sometimes fought back. The darkest moment of his journey arrived on Day 43, when a flailing dorado punctured a 4-inch hole in the raft. It took Callahan 10 days of desperate trial and error to finally jury-rig a patch using a fork and some fishing line.

““The constant struggle for survival was like "life on steroids," says Callahan. "If some little thing comes along and works, it's like elation. And if something presses you down, it is just the most painful thing." When Callahan was finally rescued, just off the coast of the small Caribbean island of Marie-Galante, it was again thanks to the dorado. A group of local fishermen spotted birds on the horizon, circling the school of fish, and came to investigate. What they found — in addition to a jackpot of prized dorado — was a bearded, emaciated man who hadn't laid eyes on another human in nearly three months. "The dorado fed me, they nourished me, they almost killed me, and in the end they brought my salvation," Callahan says. Despite feeling like "a Judas," Callahan happily waited while the fishermen hauled in the dorado. "This is the greatest gift I could possibly give to these guys. We're all brothers of the sea."

“After some recuperation, Callahan eventually returned a changed man. "I had convinced myself I was kind of a sea creature. And I learned from the experience I was definitely not a sea creature and they were all very much superior to me in that domain, and that I very much needed people."

A brief but intense period of media attention followed, including an appearance on "The Tonight Show" and a profile in People magazine. Callahan returned to the seafaring life, sailing all over the world, lecturing and designing boats — including an improved life raft called "The Clam."

“There are small habits left over from his days aboard Rubber Ducky that he's never quite been able to shake. For a long time he made sure to have food — a small jar of peanut butter or the like — with him everywhere he went; to this day, he still has to remind himself to stay hydrated. "My natural tendency is to conserve water," he says.“Otherwise, according to Lee and Magee, there are few outward indications that Callahan endured such a harrowing ordeal. "I didn't see a trace of the traumatic; all I see is the courage," Lee says. "He can make even the most painful experience sound interesting and serene." Callahan ended up working with nearly every department on the film during months of production in Taiwan. He coached Suraj Sharma, the young actor playing Pi, about the psychological distress of being adrift, and crafted numerous props, including a shade canopy using only materials Pi would have had on the lifeboat. He also spent countless hours experimenting with the 1.86-million gallon wave tank built especially for the film.

“Some of the impressions he shared with Lee made it into the film, such as a jumping phosphorescent whale and the sense that, on a clear, mirror-calm night, being at sea can feel like being in space. "I'm not very good at sitting around. I get my fingers into everybody else's pie," Callahan says.

Man Survives Two Months Adrift at Sea Because He Was So Fat

Russian fisherman Mikhail Pichugin, 46, was rescued after 66–67 days adrift in an inflatable boat in the Sea of Okhotsk, a cold and storm-prone region. His brother Sergei (49) and nephew Ilya (15) died during the ordeal, and Pichugin tied their bodies to the boat so they would not be lost. The trio had set out in early August from the Shantar Islands toward Sakhalin Island, but their engine failed, leaving them drifting with only limited food and about 20 liters of water. Reports say they survived for weeks on dry noodles, peas, and cereals; Ilya reportedly died of starvation and exhaustion in early September, and Sergei died weeks later after falling into the icy water. [Source James Kilner, The Telegraph, October 16, 2024; Chris Pandolfo, Fox News, October 16, 2024]

Pichugin, who had been 100 kg at departure and weighed roughly 50 kg at rescue, appeared emaciated and weak in video footage. His ex-wife said his initial body weight may have helped him survive the prolonged starvation. The Telegraph reported: “I don’t have much strength,” Pichugin said as he bobbed up and down in his grey inflatable boat on the Sea of Okhotsk. A red makeshift flag fluttered behind him. In a video, the fishermen throw Mr Pichugin a rope and haul him to safety. The bodies of his brother Sergei, 49, and nephew Ilya, 15, were still on the boat. Yekaterina Aksenova, Mr Pichugin’s ex-wife, told Russian media that he had been a portly 100 kilograms (220 pounds) when he set off on his fishing trip but by the time he was rescued, he had lost half his body weight. She said that Mr Pichugin’s belly may have saved him. “It’s a kind of miracle,” she said because the men had only taken enough food and water to last two weeks. “The boat was reliable. He bought it specifically to go to Sakhalin to fish and for travelling.”

Fishermen aboard the trawler Angel spotted him and pulled him aboard after initially mistaking his drifting boat for debris. He was transported to a hospital in Magadan, where doctors reported dehydration, hypothermia, and a “more or less stable” condition. Russian authorities are investigating the incident and considering negligence or safety-violation charges, as the group may have departed without adequate equipment for such a trip.

Survivors of an Immigrant Boat That Went Adrift

Associated Press reported: Moussa Sako was rescued by the Spanish Air Force on April 26, 2021. Their boat was spotted by chance more than 310 miles (500 kilometers) from the Spanish island of El Hierro — “in the middle of nowhere,” as one of the rescuers described it. They had set off 22 days earlier from Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. Only three of 63 people who boarded survived. [Source: Renata Brito and Felipe Dana, Associated Press, April 12, 2023]

Like many on the boat, Sako, an asylum-seeker from Mali, had never seen the ocean. Four men with maritime experience, including a Senegalese “captain,” were in charge of reaching the Canaries. The voyage was to take four to five days. They were packed like sardines, with Sako squeezed in the middle. The leaking gasoline and salt water in the bottom of the boat burnt their skin, making it painful to sit.

Not long after departing, they ran out of food and water. On the fourth day they ran out of fuel. To slow down their drift and be more visible to rescuers, they made a makeshift anchor by tying the engine and other heavy metal scraps to a rope. With each day that passed, the boat drifted further. Tensions boiled into arguments. The smugglers, some said, had betrayed them.More days passed. No rescue came. A growing number of people wanted to cut the rope loose to drift faster. Sako thought they would be better off staying still, where the sea was still calm and they could see some lights at night. But Sako was defeated in a vote. The rope was snipped.

Just as he feared, the wind took them to more agitated waters that poured over their boat. The next evening the first person died, a 20-year-old man. They washed and wrapped his body in Islamic tradition and prayed before throwing it overboard.By the second week, three to four people were dying every day. Some had hallucinations. One man jumped to his death thinking they had arrived. Others jumped to end their suffering.

Sako, the healthiest, tried to help the others. “I had four full (layers of clothes) on me,” he recalled. “I would take one off and put it on them ... until I had only one.” On day 18, he tried to get away from the rotting bodies. But they were everywhere. Only a handful of people were still alive. They hardly spoke.

Sako no longer feared death. He did worry about what would happen afterward. “I wanted that even if I died, for people to recover (my body) and bury me,” Sako said. “If you disappear in the water, they can look for you for a hundred years.” Finally, on day 22, a grey plane appeared in the sky above. Then came a helicopter. A rescuer dropped down and pulled Sako and the other two survivors from the corpse-ridden pirogue. The bodies of 24 people were recovered and buried in the Canaries with case numbers instead of names. The remains of the other 36 were swallowed by the Atlantic.

Pisces III: the Dramatic Rescue of Men Trapped 480 Meters Underwater

In August 1973 former Royal Navy submariner Roger Chapman, then 28, and engineer Roger Mallinson, then 35, plunged to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in an accident and were rescued after a 76-hour international rescue operation. The two British sailors plunged almost 485 meters (1,575 feet) to the ocean floor 245 kilometers (150 miles) off Ireland, in a deep-sea submersible. They were trapped in a two-meter-(six-foot)- in-diameter steel ball for three days and had only 12 minutes of oxygen left when they were finally rescued. [Source: Vanessa Barford, BBC, August 30, 2013]

Timeline of the Event according to the BBC: 01:15 — Dive begins: Chapman and Mallinson commenced a routine dive in Pisces III. The Canadian commercial submersible — working on a charter for the Post Office — was laying transatlantic telephone cable on the seabed 150 miles south west of Cork. "It took about 40 minutes to sink down to not far off 1,600ft (500m) and a bit faster to get back up," says Chapman. "We'd do eight-hour shifts, going along the surface of the seabed at half a mile an hour, setting up pumps and jets which liquefied the mud, laying cable and making sure it was all covered. It was very slow, murky work."

09:18 — The accident: "We were waiting for the towline to be attached to lift us and take us back to the mother ship. There was lots of banging of ropes and shackles — as normal during the last phase of the operation — when suddenly we were hurtled backwards and sank rapidly. We were dangling upside down, then heaved up like a big dipper," says Chapman. The pair shut the electrical systems and switched everything off so it was pitch black, dropping a 400lb (181 kilograms) lead weight to make it lighter as they descended. "It was about 30 seconds until we hit. We turned the depth gauge off at 500ft (152m) as it could have burst and got cushions and curled ourselves up to try and prevent injuries. We managed to find some white cloth to put in our mouths so we didn't bite our tongues off too," says Mallinson. The sub hit the bottom — 1575ft (480m) — at 09:30. Mallinson says his first thought was relief they were alive. He later learned it crashed at 40 mph (65 kilometers per)."We weren't injured but there was kit everywhere and we were hanging on to the pipe work. We just sat there with a torch. Unbeknown to us we had hit a gully, so we'd half disappeared below the seabed," says Chapman.

09:45 — Making contact: Pisces III made telephone contact, sending a message that they were both fine, morale was good and they were getting organised. Early indications suggested oxygen supplies would last until early Saturday morning. The sub carried 72 hours of oxygen in case of an accident, but they'd already used eight hours on the dive. They had 66 hours left.

10:00-16:30 — Scrambling ships: The pilots spent the first few hours "getting sorted", according to Chapman. "The submersible was almost upside down, we had to rearrange it, mend the kit and make sure nothing was leaking," he says. They decided if the oxygen was going to last, they needed to do very little. "If you switch off, you use one quarter of the oxygen. You don't talk or move," he says. Support ship Vickers Venturer, then in the North Sea, was contacted just after 10:30 and ordered to return its sister submersible Pisces II to the nearest port. The Royal Navy's HMS Hecate was sent to the scene with special ropes at 12:09 and RAF Nimrod aircraft flew overhead. A US Navy submersible, CURV III — designed to pick up bombs from the sea — was sent from California and Canadian Coast Guard ship John Cabot departed from Swansea.

Day Two: Mother ship Vickers Voyager arrived in Cork at 08:00 to load Pisces II and Pisces V, which had arrived overnight by aircraft. The ship sailed from Cork at 10:30. Meanwhile, Chapman and Mallinson watched supplies begin to dwindle. The pair only had one cheese and chutney sandwich and one can of lemonade, but they didn't want to eat or drink them, according to Chapman. "We allowed the CO2 to build up a bit to conserve oxygen — we had egg timers to keep track of every 40 minutes, but we'd wait a bit longer. It made us a bit lethargic and drowsy.

Day Three: First Pisces II waslaunched — with a special polypropylene rope attached to a "toggle" or collapsible snap hook — at 02:00, but the lifting rope tore from the manipulator because of its buoyancy, so it had to return to the mother ship for repairs. Then Pisces V — launched again with a polypropylene line attached to a toggle — managed to make it to the seabed but couldn't find the stricken Pisces III before it ran out of power. It returned to the surface and later tried again. "It was nearly 1pm before Pisces V found us. It was amazingly encouraging to know someone knew where we were. But when Pisces V tried to attach a snap hook the attempt failed because of the buoyancy of the rope," says Chapman. Pisces V was ordered to stay with Pisces III, despite the fact it couldn't lift it. Pisces II descended again, but had to resurface after it got water in its own sphere. Then CURV III — which had arrived with the John Cabot at about 17:30 — had an electrical fault so was unable to launch. "By midnight on Friday we only had Pisces V out of almost everything, and two broken submersibles," says Chapman.

"Then Pisces V was ordered to the surface just after midnight, which was a bit of a blow. It was like we were back to square one with no-one around. Our 72 hours of oxygen was up, we were running out of lithium hydroxide to scrub the CO2, it was very manky and cold and we were almost resigned to thinking it wasn't going to happen." Mallinson agrees that hope was fading. He says one thing that helped him was the presence of dolphins. "We'd seen them on the 28th, and even though we couldn't see them, I could hear them on the underwater telephone for the entire three days. That gave me a lot of pleasure," he says.

Day Four: 04:02: Pisces II was launched again with a specially designed toggle and another polypropylene line. "Just after 5am it had a line on us, on the aft sphere — they knew we were still alive," says Chapman. Chapman says it was at this point — when the pilots knew the line was attached — that they had the can of lemonade and sandwich. But Mallinson says he didn't feel confident the lift would work. "The aft sphere wasn't the strong point — we were in the fore sphere, and I was very annoyed we weren't being lifted by that. I thought it was the wrong decision. "I think at that point if they'd asked either of us if we wanted to be left or lifted we'd both have said 'leave us alone' — the recovery was so terrifying and the chances of getting up next to none," he says.

10:50: Lifting of Pisces III started. "As soon as we got off the sea bed it was very rough, very disorientating," says Chapman. The lift was stopped twice during ascent. Once at 350ft, for CURV to be disentangled, and a second time at 100ft, so that divers could attach heavier lift lines. "We were thrashing and rocking about so they needed to get more ropes, so they could all be heaved together," says Mallinson.

13:17 — Pisces III was dragged clear of the water. "Apparently they thought we'd died when they looked at us, it had been so violent," says Chapman. "When they opened the hatch and fresh air and sunlight rushed in it gave us blinding headaches, but we were sorted, we were euphoric. But we were also a bit pathetic. It was quite difficult to climb out of the sub, we'd been so cramped up, we could hardly move." In fact Mallinson says it took a good 30 minutes to open the hatch. "It had been jammed shut and wouldn't open upside down. When it did open, it went off like a gun, we could just smell salty sea air," he says. The pilots had been in Pisces III for 84 hours and 30 minutes when they were finally rescued."We had 72 hours of life support when we started the dive so we managed to eke out a further 12.5 hours. When we looked in the cylinder, we had 12 minutes of oxygen left," says Chapman.

Man Survives 2½ Days Underwater in an Air Pocket

In May 2013, a Nigerian man survived for two-and-a-half days trapped 30 meters (98 feet) under the sea. The BBC reported: Harrison Okene, 29, was on board the tug boat Jascon-4 when it capsized in heavy swells. It sank to the seabed, upside down, but Mr Harrison was trapped in an air pocket and able to breathe. Of the other 12 people on board, Harrison was the only survivor. He told Reuters journalist Joe Brock that he could hear fish eating the dead bodies of his fellow crew members. [Source: BBC, June 13, 2013]

The Jascon-4 capsized about 32 kilometers (20 miles) off the coast of Nigeria, while it was stabilising an oil tanker at a Chevron platform. Mr Harrison was working there as a cook, according to the ship's owners, West African Ventures. Mr Harrison told Reuters he was in the toilet when he realised that the boat was beginning to turn over, and as the vessel sank, he managed to find his way to an area with an air pocket.

Mr Harrison survived in an air pocket, 30m underwater in pitch darkness "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," he said. "I was so hungry but mostly so, so thirsty. The salt water took the skin off my tongue." "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."

But after 60 hours, Mr Harrison heard the sound of knocking. A team from the DCN global diving company had come to investigate — sent by Chevron and West African Ventures. "We expected it to be a body recovery job," DCN spokesperson Jed Chamberlain told the BBC's Impact programme. Mr Harrison "actually grabbed the second diver who went past him," Mr Chamberlain said, adding that the diver concerned got quite a fright. "This changed the whole nature of the operation to a rescue operation."

But even after Mr Harrison had been found, he still faced a complex process to bring him out safely. Having been at such depth for so many hours, he needed time in a decompression chamber to normalise his body pressure.

Christine Cridge, a medical director at the Diving Diseases Research Centre (DDRC), advised the rescue team during this process. "It's a situation I've not come across before," she told the BBC's Newsday programme. "After a certain amount of time at pressure, nitrogen will dissolve into the tissues. If he'd ascended directly from 30m to the sea surface..... it's likely he'd have had a cardiac arrest, or at best, serious neurological issues. Mr Harrison describes his story as a "miracle", but he also told Reuters: "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."

Three Scottish Brothers Row Across the Pacific in a Record 139 Days

In 2025, three Scottish brothers — Ewan, Jamie, and Lachlan Maclean — rowed 9,000 miles from Peru to Australia, becoming the first recorded team to row from South America across the Pacific and breaking the previous time record set by Russian adventurer Fedor Konyukhov, who rowed solo from Chile to Australia in 160 days in 2014. [Source: Laura Sharman, CNN, August 31, 2025]

Their 4.5-month voyage in a self-built, carbon-fiber boat involved severe challenges: seasickness, food shortages, repeated storms, and a frightening incident in which Lachlan was swept overboard before being pulled back by Ewan. Originally aiming for Sydney, they diverted to Cairns due to bad weather. “The last couple of weeks have been really hard,” Jamie told ABC. “Our expectations being crushed when we thought we were going to arrive and then getting hit by storm after storm, just getting knocked back, getting thrown north.” It followed Lachlan’s terrifying man-overboard incident during a night shift. “A side-on wave came in out of nowhere. I had like a couple of seconds to react and it just hit me,” Lachlan told ABC. “Took me right off my feet. I kind of hit the life lines on the starboard side, basically did like a backwards somersault into the water.”

The brothers credited their strong family bond and clear communication for keeping them focused and positive during the ordeal. Their boat, Rose Emily, named for a sister lost during pregnancy, is considered one of the fastest and lightest ocean-rowing boats ever built. The expedition was part of their mission to raise £1 million for clean-water projects in Madagascar through their nonprofit, The Maclean Foundation. Their goal is to fund boreholes to provide safe water to over 40,000 people. By the time they reached Australia, they had raised more than £850,000. In 2020, the brother corssed the Atlantic Ocean in just 35 days, becoming the first trio of brothers to row any ocean together and the youngest and fastest trio to cross the 3,000-mile distance between the Canary Islands to Antigua.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons; YouTube, NOAA

Text Sources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) noaa.gov; “Introduction to Physical Oceanography” by Robert Stewart , Texas A&M University, 2008 uv.es/hegigui/Kasper ; Wikipedia, National Geographic, Live Science, BBC, Smithsonian, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Reuters, Associated Press, Lonely Planet Guides and various books and other publications.

Last Updated November 2025