INSANE survival stories | Part 1

When I was in college I took a cruise from Florida to the Bahamas and then came back halfway to the Bahamas, we had bad weather, the ship was rocking pretty aggressively to the point where we weren't allowed on the upper decks . of the ship, chairs and tables were moved around the crew and the staff were not concerned. This is something they have been through. They sail this route regularly. They know that the ship is equipped to withstand quite adverse weather conditions, but as a passenger it was really scary just. Suddenly you realize that despite the perceived safety of this enormous multi-hundred million dollar ship, the reality is that when you're on the ocean mother nature is going to do whatever she's going to do now luckily the weather cleared and sure enough the boat was fine and we sailed through it but it always stuck with me that if you're in middle of the ocean and something goes wrong, it goes very wrong.

The two

stories

I'm going to share are about groups of people who were out on the open sea and something went very wrong before I continue with today's

stories

. If you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious presented in story format then you've come to the right channel because that's all I do and it uploads three or four times, sometimes even five times a week, and if that's your thing interest, I encourage you to gently activate the Like button and then subscribe to my channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of those weekly uploads.

Let's get into the stories in the early hours of May 26, 2013, three tugboats were towing this huge Chevron oil tanker in the Gulf of Guinea. They were about 32 kilometers off the coast of Nigeria. Two of the tugs were pressed against its sides. a huge tanker truck to provide stability while being towed, the third tug, which was called Jazz Cone 4, was sitting very far in front, had the main tow line tied to the front of the tanker and was doing all the onboard towing it was driving the tugboat. Jaskin 4 were 12 crew members who had been hired by a company called West African Ventures.

It was a company based in Nigeria, they owned the ship and had contracted them to come and be

part

of this towing operation. One of the crew members. It was a man called Harrison O'Keen, he was from Nigeria and he was the ship's cook at about 4:45 that morning. Harrison was in his room. He had been sleeping but had woken up because the ship was rocking dramatically. The sea was very rough. but he, like the rest of the crew, was used to rough water, so he gets up, opens the door to his room and goes out into the hallway, when he looks down the hallway, he sees that all the other doors are closed and locked. . jazz cone 4 had a policy that every time they slept or were in their rooms they locked the doors because piracy is a really big threat.

After Harrison looked down the hallway at all these closed doors, he started walking down the hallway. hallway in the other direction towards the bathroom, like he stumbled down the hallway while the ship was rocking due to the very rough seas, he makes it to the bathroom and closes the door at 4:50 in the morning. We know this because at 4:50 in the morning a rogue wave hit the side of the Jackson 4 and flipped it almost completely, broke the tow line, the boat is completely on its side and is sinking very fast, tried to open the metal door of the bathroom but already a wave of water is coming down the hallway and pushing him towards the bathroom he pushes against that wave of water and opens the door and now he is standing on the ceiling of the hallway he was on a moment ago because the boat is now completely inverted and is looking down the hallway three of the crew members have managed to get out of their locked rooms and, in a panic, are trying to get to the exit.

He watches them as another wave of water comes through one of the windows and literally sweeps them away and he knows. They're dead, the power goes out just as another wave of water comes down the hallway towards him, he twists his body around in this rush of seawater, this freezing seawater comes gushing down the hallway and grabs Harrison and throws him towards them. down this little hallway and throws him into another bathroom, it was actually an officer's bathroom, it was connected to an officer's room and now he's inside this other bathroom and it's like he's naturally and instinctively crying out to go up and try to take air because that's what anyone would do if you're underwater in a panic and while he's swimming I couldn't believe it, when the air comes out, his head surfaces in the bathroom and he's in an air pocket, but he's Completely dark, no electricity. the ship is sinking rapidly the water is freezing harrison only has his boxers on he has no light source he has no food he has no water and he has a couple of cubic feet of air that at any moment is waiting for him to collapse he knows these are his final moments and remembers a prayer his wife had texted him before starting this

part

icular job and began reciting the prayer in his head as he waited to die, the ship crashing to the ocean floor. but the air pocket does not collapse, so Harrison is in this small pocket of air 30 meters below the ocean surface at this point, although Harrison has no idea how he survived the shipwreck, now he has to deal with the fact that that will eventually go away.

When he runs out of air he will die of dehydration he will die of exposure he is in ice water up to his neck and the most terrifying thing is that the sharks and other animals are going to start converging on the boat to look for food and he is in a bathroom that although there is a bag of air, the door is open to the main hallway and his entire body is inside this bathroom, which means that if a shark was in the hallway swimming along the inside of this hallway and reached the bathroom, it would be completely exposed without a way to close it. the door was open so his lower half is completely exposed to whatever wildlife is inside the ship, so he's literally waiting to die, he just doesn't know how he's going to die after sitting there for quite a while.

He started to feel very cold and knew that if he didn't find a way to get his body a little higher in the air pocket, basically lift the upper part of his body out of the water, he was certainly going to die soon alone. due to hypothermia. Even though he knew he was doomed, his will to live was just bubbling, he didn't want to die yet and as he sat there thinking how he was going to get into this pocket of air because he didn't have anything he could do. step. or stood still, he realized that right next to him was the officer's room, this was the officer's bathroom and the door was open, he could, if he wanted, dive and swim through the door, enter the officer's room and look.

He was looking for supplies and in his mind he thought that he could probably remove some of the panels because it will be completely dark in there if you swim directly to the other side of the room, he could reach some of the fake wood panels or whatever. be. he was and he was able to pull it down and as he was working up the courage to dive into the dark waters, he started hearing this horrible sound of large sea creatures crashing into the boat. They were basically looking for entry points to the boat and then they would come. inside the boat sharks and I could hear them crashing into the inside of the boat and all I think is I'm completely exposed, I'm doomed, I have to leave, I have to get in there, I have to at least try to save myself and So, listening to the sharks and other animals looking for things to eat, he takes a deep breath and, in the total darkness, he dives and swims to the officer's bedroom and, while swimming, he goes straight to the back wall to start removing the panels.

He stumbles upon things that he thinks are our bodies, he doesn't know it, but he thinks they are. He reaches the back wall and tears off a piece of panel. Swims back, one successful trip, he goes back down and makes several trips. until he is able to design that little raft he had in mind, like a little stool that pushed him into the air pocket to where half of his upper body was now out of the freezing water, also while he was in the room from the officer, even though it was completely dark, he was like looking for things around him and ended up finding a soda bottle and a flashlight, so he turns on the flashlight, drinks a soda and just breathes even though he's still in the same terrible situation he finds himself in. grateful for that small victory, about 24 hours would pass where he has this light on and he's drinking the soda, he knows he's going to die from the sharks, hypothermia, dehydration, something is going to kill him, but a part of him is thinking what if?

Maybe if a dive team is able to locate the ship, they will go down to recover the bodies and maybe they will find me, maybe I can last that long and while he is thinking about this, he has a small glimmer of hope. Two horrible things happen to him. The light goes out, the flashlight doesn't work at the same time he describes hearing the large sea creatures enter the officer's room right next to him, so I want you to think about this, you are at the bottom of the ocean. you're on a ship that has sunk you're in a small pocket of air you really don't have supplies to last more than a few days it's in total darkness you had your flashlight went out it's totally dark a shark that's been eating your friends or more than a shark is now literally meters away from you and you can hear it eating the bodies that are apparently there, you are exposed to them because there is an entrance to that room and there is an entrance to the hallway, the fear must have been indescribable for the next 36 hours, Harrison sat there listening to a shark crash into the wall but it never attacked him.

He heard sharks in the main section of the boat jumping around waiting for any moment if the boat tilted its air a little. The pocketbook is going to collapse, it's unfathomable how terrible those 36 hours must have been. At the 60 mark, he hears what sounds like something metallic banging on the outside of the ship, he notices it across the hallway because he has a point of view. In the water of the hallway in front of him he sees a flash of light and there's no light down here so he really stood out without even thinking about it, he takes a deep breath and swims straight into the hallway, the only place he hasn't been since.

He had gone into the bathroom because there are sharks and he starts swimming further and further from his air pocket and he is running out of air he can't find the light he doesn't even know if he saw a light he thinks he might be hallucinating and he is realizing that I'm almost out of air, you know he's looking around and he decides I have to go back to my air pocket and he turns around, he's trying to swim backwards, he's looking for his bathroom, he's swimming as fast as he can. Are you about to run out of air and you reach your air pocket and you lift your head and take a deep breath and you're not sure if you really saw the light or not and you're thinking that was it?

I was going to be rescued but I was just imagining it and then a miracle it was a diver and the diver had returned the diver was part of a team that had been sent to recover bodies no one lives for three days underwater so the diver comes in his way and Harrison knew he was going to scare this diver so he gently touched him on the back and the diver reacts very violently because he expected it to be an animal of some kind and Harrison walks over and just grabs the diver's hand and squeezes it gently and he shows him his hand and the diver has a big light in his head he puts his head in this pocket of air and you see this man who for the last 36 hours has been in total darkness with no way He realized that he was finished and the look on Harrison's face is simply priceless.

They put a diving mask on Harrison and hauled him up. He didn't immediately come to the surface because he had been at the depth for so long that he had to go through something. They called it decompression, if he had breathed normal pressure air he would have died, so they put him in a decompression chamber for 60 hours before bringing him to the surface and ultimately Harrison was fine, but the trauma of this experience was so extreme that on this day harrison's wife says that basically every night he wakes up thinking he's on a sinking ship in october 1982 debra kylie and her four friends were hired by a billionaire to take his new luxury yacht 18 meters called the Maine garbage dump all the way to Florida, a fairly significant trip along the east coast of the United States.

Debra and her friends were very experienced sailors. They had taken trips like this before driving these luxury yachts. This was going to be a great trip. The weather was beautiful. The forecast seemed perfect and they were two days into their trip when they were off the coast of North Carolina, a strange storm came out of nowhere and suddenly their ship finds itself in this huge storm and despite their best efforts to prevent water from entering. Upon arrival, the ship finally begins to sink and, as the ship is sinkingclearly, the crew has to abandon it and they jump into the violently rough sea and get on this little life raft with no food, no water, no lifesaving equipment and meg, who was one of her friends, one of debra's friends had cut her throat. leg very badly when the boat was initially sinking, something had fallen and cut his leg, so he was bleeding in the water while they were clamoring inside this boat.

Deborah remembers something pushing one of her legs and looking out and not only seeing one or two sharks, she describes seeing hundreds of sharks, 18-foot-long tiger sharks that eat almost anything, including people. They had spotted Meg's bleeding leg as she clung to the boat before climbing into them. They had all invaded the area and began to feel bumps under their raft as the tiger sharks swam and charged at them, the storm finally passed and dawn came and they were out on this boat, they don't know what to do. surrounded by all these sharks that literally swim around them they have no resources they have nothing they have no way to save themselves meg was getting very sick from the wound on her leg and everyone knew that they were probably going to die here so desperately Some members of the crew were thirsty crew who began to bend over and drink seawater until they vomited, it was around this time when they were drinking seawater on the third day that some of the hallucinations began, they all saw ships in the distance and heard things that were not actually there, they They were losing and it was also at that moment that John, one of the crew members, said he saw land and jumped off the boat, they yelled at him to come back but he lost his mind and they said he only got to within a few meters of the boat before hearing him start screaming and the sharks cornered him and dragged him under the water.

Deborah would say that when this happened they heard the scream and everyone ducked inside. The boat didn't say a word or even react, they knew what was happening and they knew what was going to happen to them. They were all going to die here shortly after John jumped into the water and was devoured. by sharks mark gets up and says he needs to buy something at the store he was clearly hallucinating the other three tell him you're hallucinating come back here sit down he wasn't having it and he got off the boat immediately alone Like John, the sharks surround him, except They drag him under their life raft.

In fact, Deborah would say that the violence of the sharks attacking him caused his boat to spin, and just like when Jon was attacked, everyone just stood there in silence because they knew. that everyone was doomed on the fourth day everyone was in constant decline they had no water or food especially Meg was dying I mean she had this horrible wound that hadn't been treated and at some point Debra and the other crew member who didn't turn out The injured man's name was Brad. They fell asleep and when they woke up, Meg had died from her infection.

They took her jewelry and all the valuables they could give to her family and then they put her on the edge of the boat. They said a couple of words, a little funeral for her and then they pushed her into the water and then lay down inside the raft while the sharks attacked at this point, Deborah and Brad, the last two that are in this lifeboat completely exposed. the elements have no way of saving themselves and at some point they fell asleep and probably thought they would never wake up again but they woke up on the fifth day and brad looks out and thinks she sees a ship and then she looks down. and he looks up to make sure he's not hallucinating and he still sees the ship, he looks down again and he looks up again and it's still a ship and it's getting closer, it's getting closer to them and he says to deborah, hey, There is a ship that I am not imagining.

There is a boat and she does the same thing, she looks away, as if it really was a boat and sure enough, it was and they started waving and using all their energy to try to get this boat to see them and the boat clearly saw them, They were waving back, that ship would end up coming, picking up Debra and Brad, taking them to a hospital and they would make a full recovery. Deborah would become an amazing motivational speaker as you can imagine with an experience like that and she also wrote a book about her experience of being lost at sea.

Brad would continue returning to the sea. He was an accomplished sailor. He would end up becoming the captain of his own ship and would regularly sail that route on which they crashed. It's hard. Imagine Harrison Deborah and Brad returning to a normal life, but in the end they knew that they had this incredible experience. I'm sure it was incredibly traumatic, but I'm sure it gave them a new sense of purpose in the life they had. Now they are being gifted because they really shouldn't have been alive. Deborah would say in one of her keynotes that there is never a day when you feel more grateful for life than the day you almost die.

If you enjoyed today's stories, I would ask you to please kindly armbar. Hit the like button and then subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss any of my three or four weekly videos that I upload very similar to what you just heard. If you want to contact me, you can do it. Message me on Instagram, my username is john ballen416. I'm also very active on tiktok, where my username is mr ballen, wherever I see you, I'm incredibly grateful for your support and until next time, see you.