Rescued fisherman recounts nine-day fight for survival after St Vincent VII sank

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

For nine har­row­ing days, Shan­non Mo­hammed and five fel­low fish­er­men drift­ed across the At­lantic Ocean in a small dinghy af­ter fire ripped through the long­line fish­ing ves­sel St Vin­cent VII, forc­ing them to aban­don ship hun­dreds of miles from land.

The men sur­vived on emer­gency ra­tion bis­cuits and care­ful­ly mea­sured sips of wa­ter sal­vaged from the burn­ing ves­sel, en­dured blis­ter­ing day­time heat, freez­ing nights, de­hy­dra­tion and hal­lu­ci­na­tions, and watched one of their crew­mates die af­ter help fi­nal­ly ar­rived.

Yet through­out the or­deal, Mo­hammed said he re­fused to sur­ren­der hope.

“My mind was straight sur­vival mode,” Mo­hammed told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“I kept telling the fel­las, ‘We’re not giv­ing up. Some­where or the oth­er, we’re reach­ing home.’”

Mo­hammed was among the six-mem­ber crew aboard the St Vin­cent VII, which de­part­ed Ch­aguara­mas on Ju­ly 6 to fish for yel­lowfin tu­na be­fore catch­ing fire on Ju­ly 13 near the mar­itime bound­ary be­tween Suri­name and French Guiana.

The crew com­prised Mo­hammed, Kevin Fonteil­lo, Alex Burn­ley and An­tho­ny Mur­ray of T&T, cap­tain Es­h­war Per­saud, of Guyana and Ru­pert Charles, of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. Mur­ray lat­er died fol­low­ing their res­cue.

Mo­hammed re­called that short­ly af­ter 6.30 am, smoke be­gan pour­ing from the ves­sel’s toi­let area.

“We could not see, we could not breathe,” he said.

The crew tried des­per­ate­ly to reach the source of the blaze, but with­in min­utes the fire spread rapid­ly through the area. They aban­doned the ves­sel in a small dinghy af­ter dis­cov­er­ing the life raft had al­ready caught fire.

When flames on the ves­sel lat­er sub­sided, Mo­hammed and an­oth­er crew mem­ber climbed back aboard in one fi­nal at­tempt to save any­thing that could help them sur­vive.

That de­ci­sion would ul­ti­mate­ly save their lives.

Among the wreck­age, Mo­hammed dis­cov­ered sur­vival bis­cuits and 28 emer­gency packs of drink­ing wa­ter.

“When I saw it, I was so hap­py be­cause we didn’t have no wa­ter ... noth­ing,” he re­called.

The crew im­me­di­ate­ly ra­tioned the sup­plies, cal­cu­lat­ing that by eat­ing on­ly tiny por­tions each day they could stretch them for more than a month if nec­es­sary.

As the days wore on, how­ev­er, ex­haus­tion and de­hy­dra­tion be­gan tak­ing a heavy toll. Some crew mem­bers ex­pe­ri­enced hal­lu­ci­na­tions, be­liev­ing they were head­ing to shops for drinks or mak­ing cof­fee, he said.

Mur­ray, the el­dest mem­ber of the crew, be­came in­creas­ing­ly weak de­spite re­main­ing men­tal­ly de­ter­mined to help pad­dle when­ev­er he could.

“He want­ed to help us right un­til the end,” Mo­hammed said.

The fish­er­men were even­tu­al­ly spot­ted af­ter pad­dling fran­ti­cal­ly to­ward the pass­ing mer­chant ves­sel MV Mar­vel Kite.

“I waved un­til I felt my hand could break off,” Mo­hammed said.

Af­ter spend­ing two hours tak­ing the weak­ened fish­er­men safe­ly aboard, the Mar­vel Kite crew im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vid­ed food, wa­ter and emer­gency med­ical treat­ment be­fore chart­ing a course for Bar­ba­dos. How­ev­er, they lat­er di­vert­ed to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines af­ter Mur­ray died while re­ceiv­ing treat­ment on board, where the sur­vivors were hand­ed over to the St Vin­cent Coast Guard and tak­en to the Mil­ton Cato Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal.

Mo­hammed said the com­pas­sion shown by the crew of the Mar­vel Kite and of­fi­cials in St Vin­cent was some­thing he would nev­er for­get.

“They treat­ed us very, very good,” he said.

He re­called be­ing greet­ed with warm show­ers, blan­kets, hot meals, fresh cloth­ing and com­fort­able beds af­ter more than a week at sea.

“They kept check­ing on us all the time.”

Doc­tors and nurs­es at Mil­ton Cato Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal mon­i­tored the fish­er­men through­out the night, car­ry­ing out blood tests and con­tin­u­ous med­ical ex­am­i­na­tions.

“I don’t feel we’d be treat­ed like that in Trinidad.”

Mo­hammed al­so praised Prime Min­is­ter Dr God­win Fri­day, say­ing the Vin­cent­ian leader wel­comed the sur­vivors, en­cour­aged them to re­main in the coun­try as long as they need­ed to re­cov­er and en­sured they re­ceived cloth­ing and as­sis­tance be­fore re­turn­ing home.

“They even car­ried us to a store and told us to take what­ev­er we want­ed. They nev­er left our side un­til we board­ed the plane,” he said.

While ex­press­ing grat­i­tude to every­one in­volved in the res­cue, Mo­hammed ques­tioned what he de­scribed as short­com­ings in the re­sponse af­ter the emer­gency.

He be­lieves his fam­i­ly’s de­ter­mi­na­tion to keep rais­ing alarms helped en­sure search ef­forts con­tin­ued.

“I be­lieve if my fam­i­ly didn’t know ear­ly, we might not have been saved.”

He al­so crit­i­cised the re­cep­tion af­ter ar­riv­ing back in Trinidad and To­ba­go, say­ing the sur­vivors were asked to com­plete on­line im­mi­gra­tion pro­ce­dures de­spite spend­ing more than a week adrift with­out phones or per­son­al be­long­ings.

Mo­hammed fur­ther claimed that days af­ter re­turn­ing home, he had still not re­ceived a wel­fare call from the com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing the ves­sel.

“Not even a call to ask if I’m okay, he said.”

De­spite sur­viv­ing his sec­ond life-threat­en­ing in­ci­dent at sea, Mo­hammed in­sists he has no in­ten­tion of giv­ing up fish­ing.

“From birth I be­lieve I was a fish­er­man. The sea gives me peace of mind. I could have gone back in the sea the very next day af­ter I reached home.”