Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - Trapped Underwater For 60 Hours - The Harrison Okene Story

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

The Nigerian cook Harrison Okene was using the bathroom on a tugboat when a massive wave capsized the vessel and sent it to the ocean floor about 100 feet down. Trapped in total darkness, surrounded by drowning crew members, Okene found a tiny pocket of trapped air inside a bathroom and laundry area. He survived nearly three days in that pitch-black bubble.

On December 12, Disney Plus invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six-episode docu-series. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. The only thing left is to close the book. The End of an Era. And don't miss Taylor Swift, the era's tour, the final show, featuring for the first time the tortured poets department. Streaming December 12, only on Disney Plus. You're in a boat out on the ocean and that boat capsizes and you're trapped underneath it deep in the water, surviving only in an air pocket. Now the story all starts with this guy, Harrison, and Harrison's 29 years old, living in Nigeria, and Bro has an interesting job.

He works as a chef on a tugboat. I guess he's like cooking meals for the crew. But one day in 2013, all that changes. Because he's doing a thing. job on a boat and the boat is out about 20 miles off the shore. And it's early in the morning, so Harrison just woke up. And at this point, he hasn't even gotten dressed yet, so he's still in his boxers. So he goes to the bathroom, you know, like people do in the morning. And he's sitting there and suddenly, out of nowhere, bam, a massive wave hits the side of the tugboat and the whole thing capsizes and flips upside down. And Harrison, he falls from the toilet to the ceiling, which is now the floor with the toilet above him. And before he can react, the toilet falls and boom,

hits him on his head and he's covered in debris. And if that isn't bad enough, then the lights go out because, you know, the ship has lost power. So now he's in total darkness. Oh, but it gets worse. Then water starts pouring into the bathroom. And of course, Harrison is freaking out. So he tries to open the door and it's a struggle, but he does get it open. And the boat is completely upside down. So he has no idea which way anything is anymore. So he runs toward what he believes is the exit and there are a couple of other crew members there at a watertight door. And they're trying to get this door open, but it just won't open. Meanwhile, the water is rising all around them. So Harrison is like, fuck all this. And he decides to swim the other way because now the water is

so high that he can swim. And somehow, suddenly, boom, he gets hit with a force of water. and he's swept deeper into the tugboat, and there he finds himself in another bathroom, and bam, the door shuts behind him. Now, this bathroom is full of water, but not completely, which gives him a small air pocket. While the rest of the boat sinks, Harrison stays in the bathroom in this small air pocket where he can breathe.

So there, in the darkness, he can hear some crew members outside the door, and they're all yelling out for someone to come help them, and Harrison tries to get out of the room, but he accidentally breaks the handle off the door. And he can hear the crew members outside go silent one by one. And he's thinking, oh, great, they escaped. They made it out. But they didn't. What Harrison doesn't know is that everyone else on the ship has actually died. He's the only survivor.

So he finally gets the bathroom door open, and he emerges in a cabin. And there he finds a couple of life jackets, and some flashlights that will help him see. Now, the big problem for him is that outside of this air pocket he's in, all these other corridors are completely full of water. And he doesn't have the lung capacity to swim underwater and make it all the way to the door. So he finds a set of coveralls. And he's able to cut them into strips and make himself a rope.

That way, when he tries to swim underwater to the door, he can use that rope to guide himself back to the airpocket. pocket. Now throughout all this, he's still in his boxer shorts and they're deep in the ocean so the water is freezing and he's worried he's going to succumb to the cold. So he starts ripping wooden panels from the ceiling and he uses them to build himself a little makeshift raft to keep him out of the water and he sits on top of it to give him like a little bit of relief from the cold water. He also searches through some bags and find some sardines and a can of Coca-Cola And he rations that because this is like the only thing he's going to be able to eat and drink for as long as he's trapped down there. And so as poor Harrison sits in this air pocket in the bathroom on this little raft in the darkness, he starts feeling totally disconnected from everything. He has no sense of time, so he has no idea how long he's been down there. And he doesn't know it yet, but no one on the surface is looking for him. because everyone else on the ship died,

so people would just assume that there were no survivors. Now, he can sense the muffled vibrations of boats on the surface, almost 100 feet above him. And hearing the boats above makes him realize just how far below the surface he really is. And even if he is able to use the rope that he made and swim all the way to the watertight exit door, he's still going to drown because he'll never make it to the surface. And if that isn't bad enough, somehow a bunch of crayfish have made their way into the boat and eventually to where Harrison is. And when the crayfish find him, they start taking bites out of his body.

And almost three days pass. And Harrison is still there. And he's still rationing his sardines and Coca-Cola and still being eaten alive by crayfish. But the worst part is that the air pocket that he's surviving in, There's only so much oxygen in it, so he's running out of air. So he knows he needs to get the fuck out of this place. But then he finally gets a little hope. Up on the surface, a diver comes to put a marker buoy on the capsized tugboat

to warn other boats so that they don't accidentally run into it. And down below, Harrison can actually hear the diver doing this. And he's like, oh snap! And he starts yelling and pounding on the side. of the boat trying to get the person to hear him. But unfortunately, the person doesn't hear him. Now, Harrison, he still has no concept of time, so he doesn't know if hours or days have passed since he first heard the noise of the diver. But at some point, he notices a little something off in the darkness, like a reflection of light or something. And he's like, oh, this might be something.

so he gets off his raft to try and swim around and find where this apparent light is coming from. But eventually he runs out of breath and he has to head back to his air pocket bathroom. But Harrison, he's not going to give up. He knows this might be his one chance at being rescued. So he takes another deep breath and he goes searching again. And that is when he sees it. A diver swimming around. Apparently divers had come to find all the bodies of the crew members and take them to, you know, identify them and give them a proper burial.

So this diver sees Harrison. But he thinks Harrison is like just another dead body to collect. Until Harrison reaches out and grabs his hand. Which, if I were that diver, I would have jumped the hell out of my wetsuit. But the diver actually gets footage of this. What's that? Okay. All right, you found one, yeah?

He's alive. Okay, keep him there. Keep him there. And so Harrison, he swims back to his air pocket because, you know, he needs to breathe. And the divers follow him. And they actually get some footage of what his air pocket actually looks like. And there is Harrison just chilling. So anyway, then the diver takes him to a diver's bell and then to a recompression chamber

where Harrison has to wait for another three days because of the air pressure changes. It could kill him. But after three days in the recompression chamber, he's finally allowed to go to the surface. And of course, he survives. And it turns out that Harrison was so inspired by the divers who came and rescued him that he later became a diver himself. So good for him.