Abandon Ship: Stranded in the South Atlantic (Part 2 of 2)
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This episode is brought to you by Honda. When you test drive the all-new Prologue EV, there's a lot that can impress you about it. There's the class-leading passenger space, the clean, thoughtful design, and the intuitive technology. But out of everything, what you'll really love most is that it's a Honda. Visit Honda.com slash EV to see offers. It's 3.45 p.m. on Saturday, June the 6th, 1998. The ceiling lights flicker and fizz below deck on the pseudo-Havid.

A 360-ton fishing trawler lies half-capsized on her starboard side. The freezing South Atlantic Ocean now flooding into the ship is filling every inch of air by the second. Down in the fish factory, the metal-clad room where the catch is processed, sub-zero degree sea water is nearly at chest height.

Stricken sailors, mostly South African and Namibian fishermen, some only clad in flip-flops and loose shirts, are caught in the ocean's icy, vice-like grip. It's so cold they're barely able to move their arms and legs to stay afloat. Twenty-three-year-old Briton Matt Lewis moves fast to avoid getting pulled underwater. He leaps up onto a table, then to a bench bolted onto the far wall, the side not yet submerged.

Grasping pipes and cables along the ceiling, he shimmies his way up and out of the fast-flooding room. He has no idea where to go or what to do. He moves on adrenaline-fueled instinct. If the boat rolls over entirely, anywhere below deck will mean certain death. The ship will become their tomb. All he knows is that he needs to get out of there fast.

So the only way out of the factory was along a corridor that was now basically more than waist deep in water and had to go upstairs that were now at a different angle because the boat was leaning so much to one side. And there were a load of life jackets lying around on the floor and I grabbed one for myself and then I was next to my cabin so I thought I'll duck into my cabin, I've just got to catch my breath. And everything was hanging at different angles where we were leaning over so far.

And I thought, I've got a suit. I've got my waterproof deck suit. It's not a survival suit, but it's like a waterproof suit with a bit of insulation in it. I'll grab that. That's my best chance. It's supposed to like double your survival time in the waters. It's this kind of clear thinking that could be the difference between life and death. But caught in a raging polar storm in the South Atlantic, nearly 200 miles from land, it'll take more than a life jacket and deck suit to survive what comes next.

Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People who suddenly found themselves in a fight for their lives. In this episode, we follow the rest of Matt Lewis's chilling tale of disaster in the South Atlantic.

With the Sudur Havid floundering in the storm, the senior crew will struggle to respond. It will fall to Matt, the least experienced sailor on board, to coordinate a last gasp attempt at evacuation. But even if they somehow make it off the vessel, can they hope to fare any better in these treacherous, icy waters? I'm John Hopkins. From NOISA, this is Real Survival Stories.

Matt stumbles out of his cabin, still pulling one sleeve of his deck suit on. He makes his way outside and back into the storm. Out on deck, he finds the rest of the crew assembling. In total, 38 men are on board. Some are wearing waterproofs, others not. About half seem to have life jackets. All of them look shell-shocked. They huddle together in confusion, bracing themselves against the gale, awaiting orders from the bridge.

I looked around, everybody's ready to go, but there was no call to abandon ship. There were no orders coming down from the bridge. So at that point I was right next to the wheelhouse so I could look in and I could see Bubbles and Butty just moving around packing like grab bags and things, but I couldn't hear any commands from them. The waves are enormous. Matt is fighting shock and nausea. You can feel the boat groaning under his feet, slipping further into the ocean. They only have minutes if they want to get off this ship alive. Matt isn't going to wait any longer.

He grabs the arm of one of the crew, a Portuguese bosun called Joaquim. They'll launch the lifeboats themselves, orders or no orders. The two men race to the stern deck behind the wheelhouse where the four life rafts are housed inside bright red fiberglass containers. After quickly reading the faded information sheet, they cut the straps, release it, and hoist it over the side. To their horror, the container hits the water and doesn't open up. It just bobs there.

The waves toss it around, crashing it against the hull, and still it doesn't open. Matt clings to the railings as the boat tilts further sideways, his stomach lurching with it. He staggers across the deck and releases another raft, praying that this one will work. So we said, right, let's do the next one. And when we pushed the next one, she came and I pushed it, we mistimed it, and it rolled off and the boat was still at an angle. And it hit the deck below us, just in between people. And those things are heavy.

And it hit, cracked open on the deck and the crew manhandled it over the side, pulled the painter and it inflated. The inflatable dinghy is big enough for 15 men, but there are 38 of them on board the ship. In that moment, Matt sees Bubbles, the skipper, finally stepping out of the wheelhouse. His eyes are glazed over, his face ash grey and impassive. He seems totally stunned, like he isn't taking any of it in.

So we had one life raft for 38 people and turned to Bubbles and said, you know, do we do the other rafts? No. Oh, no, no, Matt, that'll be enough. Matt can't believe his ears. He doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. This is the captain of the ship, the most senior man on board, telling him that one life raft will be enough for the whole crew.

I think they knew what was coming and they were panicking. Not flapping, but just had seized up, you know, like just were trying to work out what the hell to do. You know, ultimately Bubbles and Butty were in charge of a boat with 38 lives on board and they had not planned for this and they'd never done anything like drills before.

And they were faced with looking at abandoning a ship in the middle of the Southern Atlantic Ocean. So we ignored bubbles and Shaquem went one way and I went through the bridge to get to the other side of the boat to launch the other two life rafts. Matt looks out at the crashing waves. He wants someone else to take charge, someone who knows what they're doing. And I...

just looked out at the sea and it was churning. The way the boat was lying and the way the weather was, the sea was just horrific. It was grey and churning. There were flurries of snow being blown across the water. The waves were being shredded by the wind. It was so strong that you had the foam on the waves was just being torn out into streaks. So you looked out from the Sea of Harvard as she was lying on a listing on her side, you looked out at this, just a mass of churning water.

and thought, "How the hell are we gonna get out of this?" And I can remember thinking that maybe this is it. He shuts his eyes and wonders how long it would take if he went overboard. It's tempting for a moment to give up, to accept that he can't get out of this alive. He feels the boat tilting, the icy rain against his face. His mind turns to his family and his girlfriend, Corrine, waiting for him at home. And then, from nowhere, a phrase pops into his head.

all men must die it's not when but how that matters it's a line from a film he'd recently watched robinson crusoe the story of a shipwrecked sailor when matt opens his eyes again he's calmer his heartbeat steadies he doesn't know how he's gonna do it but he's gonna try and get them out of this i thought you know i don't know how we're gonna make it out of this one but may as well try and i'd

didn't want to embarrass myself. So I thought, right, make a promise to myself that I'm going to, let's get off, get everybody off the boat in as good condition and with as best chance as we can. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know. I was looking for some guidance still from the skipper, but no one was coming. So I thought, right, let's get everybody off into the life rafts and we're going to fight to see if we can survive.

Acting as calm as he can, Matt reassures the crew and helps usher everyone to the back of the ship and into the waiting life rafts. As he checks everyone is accounted for, Matt starts to think about making his own escape.

Two of the Portuguese fishermen, Shaquem and Carlos, who'd been at Sea-Lite 15, 20 years, they were in one of the rafts already at the back of the boat. And I thought, right, when we abandon, I'm going to get into that raft. That's going to be the one to get into. Shaquem and Carlos were both really experienced fishermen. They just gave oozed competence. And I thought, right, I'll go with them. Best chance of survival. It's a low bar, but things are looking up.

Everyone is behaving, getting themselves organized and evacuated safely, even without the officers taking command. But a few minutes later, when Matt looks back to check on the second raft, his raft, he can't believe what he sees. And when I turned back, they'd cut their raft away. They'd cut the rope that secured it to the boat, and their raft was already drifting away, maybe 20 meters off the stern. And Shaquem and Carlos had cut themselves free of the boat in a raft that was built for 14, 15 men.

Horrified, he shouts after them. But there's no point. It's too late. Their raft gets carried out on the current, small and defenseless against a huge, merciless ocean. It's a selfish, foolish act, but Matt hasn't got time to dwell on it. Once again, he manages to clear his mind and stay focused. There's now just one raft left for the remaining crew. There should be just enough space for everyone. Incredibly, at this moment, Matt still has sight of the bigger picture.

Before making his own leap into the unknown, he's going to go back through the boat to double check there's nobody left on board. I didn't want... The thought of leaving somebody on the boat just horrified me, so I walked, climbed back along these crates to see, just to check that everything was okay. The boat has rolled almost on its side, her bow now completely submerged. Matt clambers over railings and winches to get back down the deck. He calls out, yelling against the raging wind, checking no one is left behind.

Then, to his amazement, an elderly sailor, an Icelander called Björgavinn, stumbles out of a doorway. Björgavinn came through the door and he said, Matt, Matt, what is happening? And I said, we're abandoning, you know, the ship's sinking.

We have to go now. And he'd been asleep through all of this, like for all of the winches and the fishing and the screaming and the pumps and everything like that. And the boat going nearly 45 degrees off to one side. He'd managed to sleep through it. And somebody had only just woken him up and he had walked out into this craziness of a ship abandoning. And he was the most experienced, most qualified guy on board and they'd let him sleep. But he came out

I gave him a life jacket and said, "Here, shove this on, and we need to go now." Matt starts making his way back towards the stern of the ship, back to the rafts, but when he checks over his shoulder, he notices Björgavind isn't with him. Cursing, he has to backtrack once more. Soon he sees why. The wiry old sailor is struggling with something in the water, which is now halfway up the deck. As Matt gets closer, he realizes what it is.

Björgvin is trying to pull a person out of the water. And it's not any crewman. It's the skipper. Bubbles is lying face down, waves crashing over his body. His skin is deathly pale and he's not moving. Bubbles, our skipper, was in the water, collapsed like grey in the face. And Bubbles was, you know, a heavy guy, but Björgvin was trying to help him up. So the oldest bloke on board was trying to help the heaviest bloke on board who looked like he'd had a heart attack.

Matt crouches beside him, shaking him and calling his name. After a moment or two, Bubbles' lips move. He's alive. Just. We managed to get Bubbles up into the alleyway that led to the back of the boat, between the crates, and we got him to the stern of the boat. Björgvin got into a raft, and then I helped Bubbles. I helped him over the railing at the back of the boat, this big steel railing. And I can remember standing there with this

like massive South African guy, basically at my feet, in between my feet and the railing. And I had hold of his jumper, like doing a scruff of his neck, like just holding, pinning him to the side of the boat, waiting while they're waiting for the raft to come alongside. And eventually the swells brought the raft in and the crew put their hands up and I dropped bubbles basically into the outstretched arms of his crew and into the raft. Exhausted,

But his veins still pumping with adrenaline, Matt takes one more look around the deck. Content he's the last man off, he swings his legs over the railing and steadies himself against the howling wind. Then he takes a deep breath and leaps into the air. And then I jumped in after him and I just landed in this life raft and I thought, that's such a feeling of exhilaration. I was like, wow. And just this rush. And it was because we were off the sinking ship, but I had no idea what was coming next.

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Overnight, Duncan's Pumpkin Spice Coffee has sent folks into a cozy craze. I'm Lauren LaTulip reporting live from home in my hand-knit turtleneck that my Nana made me. Mmm, cinnamony. The home with Duncan is where you want to be. It's just after 4 p.m. on Saturday, June the 6th, 1998. Matt is on board the raft with 15 other men. It's a tangle of bodies and life jackets in a space only three meters across with just a thin canvas canopy across the top.

Everyone's wet and cold, extremely cold. One sailor is only wearing shorts. Bertie, the fishing master, is shivering uncontrollably in his shirt sleeves. Most aren't wearing shoes. They sit close, huddling for warmth, side by side around the edge of the small dinghy, waiting to drift free. But the wind is pinning them against the hull of the Sudur Havid. Looking out of the opening in the canvas, Matt looks up at the ship, which is looming ominously above them.

As her bow sinks further into the water, her stern is hoisted higher up into the air, exposing her aging hull. Her red paint is peeling and blistered, covered in rust and slime. Her propellers slice slowly through the Antarctic air. The way the wind was holding us against the back of the boat and the waves meant that basically we were being crushed against the side of the hull. And so we, in our little inflatable life raft,

were being pushed against this massive rusting hull. A huge swell suddenly lifts the small raft up without warning, sending it crashing into the Sudha Havid. Matt braces for impact, but still receives a sickening blow to the back of his head. Again and again, they slam into the rough steel plates, their vulnerable rubber vessel pitched against the rust, screws, and spiky handrails protruding from her stern. It seems the wind and waves are conspiring to sink them.

Another swell lifts them up again, just as the metal gantry hanging off the rear of the ship comes crashing back down right on top of them. We managed to get along the side of the boat a little bit and the big steel arch that held the trawl wires up when the boat had been built, these massive steel girders just came crashing down on top of us and it pushed the whole raft underwater. Matt holds his breath as they get dragged down under the icy water deep below the surface.

He feels himself somersaulted, thrown against someone else, and he's sure the raft is going to rip or flip over. But after a few seconds, a wave spits them out, and they emerge, gasping for air, coughing and spluttering. They're still alive and upright, but the raft is badly damaged and half-flooded. They are now waist-deep in freezing seawater.

They try and paddle away from the ship desperately using whatever they can. Some use their bare hands, while others attempt to bail out the raft with a couple of wellington boots and an empty coffee jar, but it soon proves pointless. Against the driving wind and waves, water is coming in faster than they can bail it out. Eventually, they resign themselves and close the canvas flap to shut out the elements. Matt looks out through a gap in the canopy, and he catches sight of the Sudha Havid.

It's a strangely poignant moment to watch the boat sink, bow first, then rise briefly back up as if fighting for her own survival. And then she's gone. And then in the middle of this storm with all the wind howling and the waves and that, when the engines actually went quiet, it was a strange absence of noise there for a moment. The crew sit in silence. No one speaks.

One of the guys said there's somebody next to the raft.

And I said, we've got to get him in. No, no, we haven't got room in the raft. It'll sink us. I said, you can't leave him out there. Let's pull him in. So we pulled him in. And as I pulled him up, he landed on top of me and knocked me back in the water. And he wasn't breathing. And I shook him and took him and shook his shoulders and said, come on, breathe, fight, as though you could force him to.

And he then gasped and breathed and I rolled him onto his back with his life jacket supporting him and let him go. And I know now that that was the cold water had given him cold water shock and he had gone into collapse. Most likely, this is also what happened to Bubbles on board the Sudu Havid. Cold water shock is what happens when the body is submerged in water below 15 degrees centigrade. Blood vessels suddenly contract and the heart works overtime to keep circulation going.

As the body goes into shock, it can suffer paralysis and even cardiac arrest. The sea water here in the deep South Atlantic is far lower than 15 degrees. Here, it is sub-zero. Matt tries to stay positive, but he knows the life raft isn't the safe haven it ought to be. Not only is it too small for 17 men, not much bigger than a kid's paddling pool, it doesn't seem to be equipped with any of the survival equipment that should be on board.

Normally a life raft should have survival equipment in it. It should have, you know, balers and flares and maybe a radio beacon, an EPO, an emergency radio beacon. But we could find none of that. When we searched around the raft, we could find none of the kit that you would normally expect to find. None of the things that we actually needed to survive. So we were...

adrift in a life raft with none of the kit that we needed and the light on the top of the raft wasn't working either so we were adrift in an unmarked life raft with no means of letting people know we were there. Before long, it starts to get dark. Even though Bubbles and Bertie are on the raft with them, the crew are still looking to 23-year-old Matt for guidance. But Matt too has gone quiet. In fact, concern has spread across his face as if he has another of his grim intuitions rising up inside him. He doesn't want to say it out loud

but he's pretty sure no one sent a mayday signal before they abandoned ship, which means no one's coming to help them. So when within a short time in the raft, people were asking me if we were going to be rescued. One of the guys said, "Matt, where's the boat? Where's the boat that's going to come and rescue us?" And I couldn't bring myself to tell him. I knew from looking on the radar that I hadn't seen a boat for days. There was no boat anywhere near us.

And all I'd seen on the radar was icebergs on the top of waves, basically, that show up. And our nearest boat that I knew of was our sister ship. And she was 100 miles away. She was fishing in a different part of the fishery. So she was on the other side of South Georgia. I couldn't tell them that. So I said, I don't know. They are completely at the mercy of the sea. As night falls, the storm rages on and the temperature continues to drop.

The small orange inflatable raft is tossed about, spinning away, carried on top of monstrous ocean swells. All Matt can do is pray they stay upright. And this raft was still being trashed by the sea. We were being picked up by swells and you could feel the raft lifting and being pushed over to one side, but you didn't know if it was just going to roll one day. Was it just going to roll on a wave and then we'd just be catapulted into the sea?

Or would she just go over the next wave and we'd be okay? And every time we just were okay, we stayed upright. As the raft rises and falls with the waves, Matt does his best to keep busy, adjusting his hood or his sleeves, trying to fix a section of the canopy that keeps coming undone. He knows that hypothermia will set in if he doesn't keep active.

And it had been very noisy at first with people laughing and, you know, joking and yelling and asking questions and sometimes people were moaning or screaming. But all of that had died down over time. He can't help but notice that some of his crewmates are now lying motionless in the freezing water. In fact, most of the crew have fallen silent. And every now and then,

Bubbles started doing roll calls so he'd been quiet and then all of a sudden he started calling out the names of those he knew were in the raft. And it was almost annoying because it made you snap out of your, just silence inside your head and you had to actually say, "Yeah, I'm here. I'm okay." So you'd hear him saying that Hannes, Woody, you know, all the other names, Matt, are you there? Yes, Skipper, I'm here.

Then at one point I realized that I was shorter. It was getting shorter than it was. The roll call was not taking as long. And then I can remember him, bubbles yelling out, like, "Butty, Butty!" And Butty didn't reply. And he said, "Butty!" And Hannes said, "Stop it, man. He's dead." That didn't quite add up in my head. I still hadn't quite clicked what had happened, that people were actually dying around me, but people were going quiet.

Trevor next to me, it sort of almost looked like he was asleep when he was just resting, just floating there with his life jacket and his beard. But it had gone quiet. But then you start thinking like, how long can I survive? How long is it going to take? Are we going to be rescued? I didn't see how we could be rescued at night because there were no boats nearby and we had no light and no radio. So I couldn't see how I could make it to the morning

but I didn't see how we would be rescued that night and I just thought I just gotta try and grit my teeth and survive. The minutes creep by, stretching into hours. Matt, too, is now motionless. He fights the urge to go to sleep, but his brain is starting to shut down. Then, from far away, he thinks he can hear someone calling his name. He's frozen stiff, can barely open his eyes to see who it is. He waits. His name is called again.

Eventually he realizes it's one of his mates trying to get his attention. The canvas door has come undone, again, and it needs to be fixed shut. It's letting in the icy wind, making them even colder than they are already. Once again, Matt summons his strength and forces himself to move. So I crawl across the raft to help fasten this door down again, and we managed to get it down, and then it was...

Matt is so cold and tired. He's almost delirious. He doesn't trust his own eyes. Could he really have seen a light out there?

and the swell moved and the light went and then the swell moved again dropped away and i saw a row of lights and i and i thought it's a ship my mind was running so slowly because of the hypothermia but i managed to spit the words out there's a ship and then it was gone again and then i was like thinking right we've got to get the attention of this ship matt can hardly think straight his hands are rigid he can't hold the whistle on his life jacket but he somehow manages to get it into his mouth

He blows, but nothing comes out. He tries to scream, but he's too exhausted and weak. What he needs is a light. He knows there's one on his life jacket, which activates in the water. He plunges it over the side, then holds it up and waves it frantically at the ship. It's taking every last fiber of his being to keep moving and shouting, but he knows this is it, their only hope. If the ship doesn't see them now, they will die. The light is getting closer. He hasn't imagined it. It's a boat, and it has seen them.

After just a few minutes, the boat came alongside and the floodlights illuminated. And we pulled back the doors to see this enormous boat just above us. Matt and the other men are too cold and weak to be joyous. They look out at the vessel looming over them, its spotlight searching for them, scanning over the black, swirling sea. They get closer and closer until it seems their rescuers are more likely to crush them than to save them.

But suddenly they see men in bright yellow waterproofs standing on deck, holding rope ladders, reaching out to them, shouting encouragement. But Matt's exhausted. He can barely lift his arms. And I thought, there's not a hope in hell of us getting up there. So they threw a rope and it slipped through my fingers. I couldn't hold on. And then I think that happened twice before they threw the rope and then they lost grip of it and I was left holding the rope. And I thought, what the hell am I supposed to do with this?

And then I was just, this is ridiculous. I can't do this. It all suddenly seems hopeless. And then an enormous wave lifts the life raft high into the air, so high that Matt can see the men's faces as they reach out and grab for him. I just put my hands up, held them up in the air, hoping that they would just grab me. And I think they tried and failed. And then the waves lifted me up again and they grabbed hold of my suit.

and grabbed me like big scruffs and the wave dropped away and the life raft dropped from below me and I was left dangling in the air yelling pull, pull, pull and they pulled me over the railing, over this rusty railing and put me on the deck and I fell flat on my face. The ship that rescues Matt is called the Ila Camila.

a Chilean fishing vessel that happened to have entered the waters near the Sudu Javid just two days before she ran into trouble. It turns out there was a Mayday call before the Sudu Javid sank. They heard it and came running to help. But the fact that they found them seems nothing short of a miracle. The Isla Camila, the boat that rescued us, she had been, I think she was 28 miles away when she got our Mayday call. She heard the Mayday call and she cut her lines and raced to come and save us.

And within something like 20 minutes or 30 minutes of arriving on site at the scene, at night from 30 miles away, in the middle of this storm, she managed to find the first raft just by the experience of the guys trying to work out the drift of the currents and the action of the wind. As the crew on board the Ila Camila help him into dry clothes, Matt finds out that his raft wasn't the first to be rescued.

The first raft to be found had 14 people in it and all had survived. Out of my raft, there was 17 people in it. Seven had survived, 10 had died. And out of the third raft, which I'd seen with Shaquem and Carlos leaving from the boat, we don't know how many were in it, but all died. It was found the next morning by one of the boats in the search turned upside down and just empty. So we don't know whether it was

not having enough people and it maybe meant that when it was hit by the weather it just flipped. Well, sadly I wish they were here to tell us what happened, but we lost all of those as well. So in total out of 38 people on board, 21 survived. The Ila Camila takes the surviving men back to South Georgia and from there they travel onto the Falkland Islands. Then they are transported home by the Royal Navy. Matt goes back to Aberdeen to the warmth and safety of life on dry land

and to the loving embrace of his girlfriend, Corrine. Despite battling nightmares and flashbacks, he does his best to resume a normal life. I hardly talked about it. I talked about it to a few people, but nobody could really understand what it was like. And I don't think people really appreciated how close we came at night to losing our lives, all of us. The trauma would take years to process, but Matt went on to marry Corrine and have two children.

His daughter he named Camilla, after the ship that rescued him that night. He looks back now, 25 years later, and he still can't quite make sense of what happened. I think I'm glad I didn't embarrass myself on the night when we sank or the day when we sank. I'm glad that I didn't fall apart and that I did try to save as many as I could. I wish I'd known more about survival. I wish I'd known and been able to actually do better.

But also I wish I'd stood up to Bubbles and Buti and yelled at them and told them to get down to the factory, come and see the problems we're having. I do not know why they didn't come down to the factory and see what the problems were that we were having. And I still don't understand why. And I'm not, I wish I could argue with them. I wish they'd survived so that we could argue and take apart the events.

A friend once asked me about whether I had survivor's guilt because, you know, you hear about it with cancer survivors and with other similar sort of big incidents to mine. And I have not got a shred of it because I fought as hard as I could to survive. And I think that's part of why I survived was because I fought as hard as I could. In the next episode, we meet Jim Davidson.

an amateur mountaineer from the United States who was blindsided by a disaster that would strike fear into the hearts of even the most experienced climbers. Falling through a thin layer of ice, Jim and his climbing partner Mike will plummet 30 meters into a crevasse, crash landing on an ice shelf. With the two men buried under snow and with the clock ticking, Jim will begin a desperate attempt to dig them both free. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.