Moreover, in this case, it is not the water as such that is frightening, but what is hidden in its depths, which the imagination supplements with images that cause awe. However, it is much more terrible to really find yourself in the darkness of the abyss – to fall into a trap on the seabed, in an air bubble shrinking every minute. To understand that there is no hope of getting out, and, most likely, this is where you are destined to stay forever.
Jascon 4 was a small tugboat that sailed the Niger Delta. After seeing off another oil tanker, he headed back. This route was familiar, but Sunday May 26, 2013 became the last for the tug. It is believed that because of the sudden onrushing of a huge wave, the ship simply capsized, and perhaps it was one of the killer waves covered in sinister legends. Be that as it may, the blow was fatal, and the tug sank. The force of the collision turned out to be such that the ship turned upside down with its keel, and in this position it lay down on the bottom. It all happened about 20 nautical miles from the coast. Of the twelve crew members, eleven died almost instantly. The history of the latter is truly unique.
Harrison Ojegba Okene was the ship’s cook. That ill-fated day when his ship sank, he remembered for the rest of his life.
“… I heard the screams of people, I felt the ship sinking, I heard a voice saying: “Is this ship sinking or what?” … I was in the toilet at that moment, and the toilet bowl fell on my head, everything began to fall on my head … My colleagues shouted: “God help me, God help me, God help me.” After a while, everything was quiet, and I didn’t hear anything else.”
The tugboat sank quickly. Okene barely managed to find a cabin that had a pocket of air left. All he had with him was a pair of flashlights and a bottle of soda. Cook recalled that the lanterns quickly went out and he was left alone, in the dark, on a sunken ship, gradually losing all hope. He heard how large fish swam near the ship’s hull and fought with each other, as he later suggested, for pieces of the bodies of dead people. To the great horror of the survivor, his cabin gradually filled with water. He managed to find a pair of air mattresses, on which he continued to sit in absolute darkness, hearing only the sounds from outside.
According to Okene, the only thing that kept him from going crazy with despair and fear was faith. Almost all three days that passed in an underwater trap at the bottom of the ocean, he prayed without ceasing, realizing that salvation can only be a miracle. And by coincidence, like those that happen in films or science fiction books, a miracle happened.
