THREE stowaways are recovering after surviving an 11-day ocean voyage from Nigeria to the Canary Islands on the ship’s rudder, Spain’s Maritime Safety and Rescue Society has said.
The three men, all from Nigeria, were found on the Alithini II oil tanker at the Las Palmas port on Monday afternoon and transferred to hospitals on the island, according to the maritime rescue agency.
The agency shared a photo of the three men sitting on top of the rudder under the ship’s massive hull with their feet hanging only a few inches from the water.
According to the MarineTraffic tracking website, the Malta-flagged vessel left Lagos, Nigeria on November 17 and arrived in Las Palmas on Monday. The distance between the ports is roughly 2,800 miles.
Other people were previously discovered clinging to rudders while risking their lives to reach the Spanish islands located off north-west Africa.
The Maritime Rescue Agency has dealt with six similar cases in the last two years, according to Sofia Hernandez, who heads the service’s co-ordination centre in Las Palmas.
Ms Hernandez said: “It is very dangerous.”
“We are talking about several metres difference. This part could have been perfectly submerged in the water,” she said.
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