7. Harrison Okene
Harrison Okene survived 60 hours in the submerged Jackson 4, a Nigerian boat that capsized in the Atlantic in 2013. He is undoubtedly one of the luckiest people alive on the planet.
One, the ship’s cook, managed to find a large air pocket and survived nearly three days immersed in freezing water with only a lone Coca Cola to sustain him.
When divers probed the Jackson 4, it was to look for bodies. They never imagined that they would find a survivor. Okene’s recollection of his torturous time in the belly of the Jackson 4 would make anyone’s skin crawl. It was pitch-black, cold, and full of strange sounds.
One credits his faith for helping him find the mental strength to soldier on.
6. Filo, Etueni Nasau and Samu Pelesa
In 2010, three teenage boys set out to sea off the tiny isle of Tokelau in the Pacific Ocean, but what was supposed to be a routine trip turned disastrous.
Filo Filo, Etueni Nasau, and Samu Pelesa were lost at sea for a full 50 days or nearly two months, and remarkably all of them survived.
The problems started when the teenagers got lost, drifting out to sea on their tiny boat. Unable to find the shore, they survived on their store of water, and when that ran out, they drank rainwater.
As the weeks went on, the boys caught birds for food and managed to cling to their lives, but just barely. Back home, a memorial service was held for the boys because nobody could have imagined that they would be able to survive the unforgiving conditions of the raw Pacific Ocean.
Defying all odds, the three boys were finally rescued by a fishing boat near Samoa. Their total trip? 500 miles of the deep ocean.
5. Jesus Eduardo Vidana, Lucio Rendon and Salvador Ordonez
For 9 long months, Jesus Eduardo Vidana, Lucio Rendon, and Salvador Ordonez endured unimaginable suffering on the Pacific Ocean. How these men survived nearly a year at sea is anyone’s guess! The trio was part of an ill-fated shark fishing trip that took them 5,000 miles across the deep sea when their boat ran out of fuel, and they were left drifting aimlessly in strange waters.
Their original starting point was Mexico’s Port of San Blas, but they wound up in Taiwanese waters, having covered thousands of miles of ocean.
The men were part of a larger crew, but the other two members perished when they couldn’t eat the only food available; raw fish and birds.
Although suspicions of cannibalism swirled around the men’s story, they insist that they just dumped the bodies overseas. But realistically, what happened during those harrowing nine months is anyone’s guess.
4. Jose Salvador Alvarenga
For 13 grueling months between 2012 and 2014, Jose Salvador Alvarenga was drifting around in the Pacific Ocean with little to no hope of survival.
The fact that he beat the odds at all is more than impressive; it’s fairly close to miraculous. When Alvarenga left Mexico on a fishing trip in 2012, he could never have anticipated the strange course of events that would alter his life forever.
A freak storm hit his fiberglass boat and sent him spinning far off course, away from the safety of land and deep into the heart of the mighty Pacific.
He traveled 5,000 miles across the sea towards the Marshall Islands, where he was finally rescued a year later. How did he manage to survive the journey? Alvarenga allegedly ate raw fish, birds, and turtles and sustained himself on rainwater.
When he set out for the trip, he had a companion named Ezequiel Cordoba, who didn’t survive the ordeal. Although Alvarenga was accused of cannibalism, he vehemently denies it to this day.
3. Alexander Selkirk
In 1704, Alexander Selkirk landed on a small island near Chile with his merry band of British privateers, but the harmony did not last long. Selkirk, along with his shipmates, was spending his time harassing Spanish ships on the coast in an attempt to claim the coast for Britain.
Upon arriving at the island, part of the Juan Fernandez archipelago, Selkirk had serious concerns about whether the ship could make it back to the United Kingdom. The rest of the crew disagreed and abandoned him on the tiny isle with only a small heap of weapons, some food, rum, and tobacco.
Selkirk’s pride and his foolish optimism would cost him dearly. He wound up spending 4 years and a handful of months on the unnamed island. To add more misery to the already unfortunate situation, Selkirk had to hide from Spanish forces every time they landed on the island, patiently waiting for another British ship to appear on the horizon and save him.
Eventually, he was spotted and saved in 1709 and went on to become the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.
2. Brad Cavanagh
Although Deborah Kiley and Brad Cavanagh’s ordeal only lasted for 5 days, it earns a top spot on this list for the sheer challenges that the pair encountered during their terrifying time at sea. It all started in October 1982, when the Trashman, a luxury yacht, set off from Bar Harbor, Maine.
Kiley and Cavanagh were part of a few-person crew tasked with bringing the Trashman to its new owner in Florida. The fifth person on the ship, Meg Mooney, was the captain’s girlfriend.
Tragically, they hit a deadly snag in North Carolina when the Trashman got tangled up with a storm and was torn to bits by the ocean.
But…according to Kiley, trouble started much earlier when she realized that John Lippoth, the ship’s captain, was perpetually drunk and seemed to be afraid of the sea.
Mark Adams, another member of the Trashman’s crew, was also consistently drunk. When the worst possible situation happened, half the crew was blind drunk, and the other half was powerless against the constant assault of the raging sea, which was rising in 40-foot waves all around them.
Although they managed to make it to a lifeboat, they soon ran afoul of hundreds of great white sharks, who swarmed the lifeboat and eventually consumed 3 of its 5 passengers.
Kiley and Cavanagh were ultimately saved by a Russian cargo ship, and their harrowing story has been popularized in movies, books, and film.
1. Marguerite de la Rocque
Lifetime banishment to the Isle of Demons might seem like a pretty harsh punishment, but that’s exactly what 16th-century French noblewoman Marguerite de la Rocque got when she dared to take an off-limits lover.
The young, unmarried, and previously virginal de la Rocque crossed the mighty Atlantic with a relative in 1542, intending to set up a colony in Canada. Things took a turn for the scandalous when de la Rocque started a sexy tryst with a fellow passenger.
As a result, the unvirtuous miss, her lover, and a servant were sent to an island near the St. Lawrence Gulf and left to die in the harsh Canadian winter. Incredibly, the group lived for sixteen months by building a small hut and keeping the bears away by
