Real Survival Stories - Abandon Ship: Sinking in 30-Foot Waves (Part 1 of 2)

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

A rookie sailor goes looking for adventure in the remote waters of the sub-Antarctic… and finds it. Matt Lewis joins the crew of a deep sea fishing trawler sailing out of Cape Town. But far out in the South Atlantic, a polar storm will catch them all unawares. Battered by giant swells, before they know what’s hit them they’re taking on water. The ship is going down… Many thanks to Matt Lewis. For more on his story, read Last Man Off: A True Story of Disaster and Survival on the Antarctic Seas. A Noiser production, written by Susan Allott. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started with a 7-day free trial. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-b-s-y-n dot com. Saturday, June the 6th, 1998. The deep-sea fishing trawler Sudur Havid slides through the icy waters of the South Atlantic.

She's 200 miles from land at the edge of Antarctica. 23-year-old Briton Matt Lewis wakes from a restless sleep with an uneasy feeling flooding his thoughts. After two months at sea, he's almost used to the incessant roll of the Antarctic waves and the freezing blasts of polar wind. He's even grown accustomed to the cramped confines of the aging, rust bucket of a boat that has become his home. But today, he knows instantly that something's wrong. Woken by the crash of falling objects, his sleepy eyes focus, trying to make sense of the strange slant of the curtains,

hanging away from the wall at an angle of thirty degrees. Getting dressed quickly, another sudden sideways lurch of the cabin sends him flying. Clutching handrails, Matt staggers through narrow corridors and up metal stairwells, hauling himself up towards the deck. I can remember on the morning of Saturday the 6th of June just waking up and looking out the door and seeing the biggest waves we'd had so far that trip. So I got all my kit on, like layers and layers of thermals and insulation and socks and boots and hats and I went out on deck for my first hour in the morning and it was just crazy it was like working it's like a rodeo. Matt steps out into the swirling snow and freezing ocean spray. Despite wearing a hefty deck suit, oil skins and thick thermals, he feels his blood run ice cold in his veins.

Looking around him, he's awestruck at the raging sea. Giant waves rise up ahead of them. Twenty, thirty feet tall, the size of two-story homes some looms so high they block out the morning sun casting long shadows across the icy deck before breaking in a furious thundering crash so the waves were enormous and the crew were out on deck getting the boys aboard and get starting to get the rope on board and they're already having trouble just staying up on their feet basically the pseudo-harbour would get to the top of the swell, and then she would speed down, down the wave, and then plough into the trough at the bottom of the wave.

And there would be this couple of seconds of delay before the bow actually came back up to the surface. And you wondered if the bow was actually going to come back up, or if it was just going to stay down and get hit by the next wave. Matt can't quite believe the crew are working in these conditions. But glancing up at the skies, he has a horrible feeling things are only going to get worse. In the distance, the clouds look dark and ominous. A storm is coming.

There are 38 souls on board, all experienced sailors. Well, all except for Matt. So despite fearing the worst, he assumes that the captain and crew know best. That they'll be okay. And all of this you had to carry on working through. The fishermen didn't even flinch at the weather. So I thought, well, I can't flinch either.

I have to just go out on deck and not complain. It might be rough weather, but it's not, they're not complaining, so I can't. But his instinct is spot on. The disaster is brewing, and in just a few hours, they'll be scrambling to abandon ship. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People who suddenly found themselves in a fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Matt Lewis,

a young Englishman who goes looking for adventure in the remote waters of the sub-Antarctic, and finds it. Stranded at sea, with a polar storm raging, Matt's life and the lives of his crewmates are suddenly in grave danger. And as the captain and first mate fail to act, Matt will be left with a choice. Succumb to terror or fight to survive. I'm John Hopkins. From Noisa, this is Real Survival Stories. It's early April 1998, and 23-year-old Matt Lewis is in Cape Town, South Africa. The young Englishman makes his way through the city's bustling port. He walks past the marina, hemmed in by luxury apartments.

He smiles at the sight of the pleasure boats and yachts bobbing happily at their moorings. He glances down at his watch and quickens his pace. He's running late. Matt hurries along the wharves as cranes sweep high overhead, loading containers onto trucks bound for the heaving metropolis far behind him. By the time he arrives on the designated quayside, Matt's stomach is doing somersaults in nervous anticipation. He looks back one more time at the city, the glinting skyscrapers,

table mountain looming over them despite the distance. He considers the comfortable, familiar idea of life on dry land. He turns back, takes a deep breath, and looks out to sea, towards his future. With his scruffy clothes, long hair tied up in a ponytail, and shaggy beard, any passer-by might mistake him for a young, hippie traveller. But on paper at least, he's here to do a job.

It's been a strange week so far. A phone call out of the blue, a mad rush to the airport, and a tearful goodbye to his loving girlfriend, Corrine. Just a few days ago he was languishing in an office block in Aberdeen, Scotland, and now he's at the edge of the world, about to embark on the trip of a lifetime. Beyond the sea wall and the breakers, the ocean looks calm and clear and vast. Matt is eventually met by two smartly dressed men, representatives of the fishing company that has hired him.

As a recent graduate in marine biology, Matt jumped at the chance to join their upcoming trip as a scientific observer. His job will be to assess the catch, and also to flag anything in the course of the voyage that might jeopardize the company's fishing license. As such, he's hardly expecting a warm welcome from the crew. After quick introductions, Matt is promptly led to the quayside and to the waiting vessel, a long-line fishing trawler, and the place he'll be calling home the next few months,

the Sudur Havid. Matt's heart sinks at the sight of it. Just 45 metres long, the small boat looks half derelict. Her once blue hull is filthy with rust and barnacles. Her white masts and cabins faded to a dirty grey. Actually, as you got closer to her, she was even worse. She was old, rusty, just grubby. She was sitting low in the water just by the dock in Cape Town.

I can remember the concrete wharf there was quite modern and Suda Harbour just looked small and old next to it. He does his best to disguise his disappointment. Whisked aboard, he soon meets the Skipper, a squat, tattooed white South African called Bubbles, and his tall, darker-skinned, second-in-command Bertie, the fishing master. They're an odd couple, but old friends and experienced fishermen, and proud to command one of the most diverse crews out of Cape Town. A mix of 38 mainly South African and Namibian sailors, with a smattering of various Europeans.

And now, one inexperienced 23-year-old observer from the UK foisted on them as a legal requirement of their fishing license. Despite Bubble's gruff hello, the crew are generally welcoming. Nevertheless, Matt can't help feeling out of his depth. The Sudu Havid and its crew would be sailing out to the Southern Ocean to the sub-Antarctic to catch Patagonian toothfish. A hostile deep sea environment with giant swells and some of the world's most extreme weather. So I mean, Southern Ocean is not famous for being a very mild place. So I was well aware

that the weather down there was going to be challenging. But then when you're looking at a boat in Cape Town and she's just sitting, just lolling there next to the wharf, then it's easy to put you, just casually make a decision and put your trust in it. He knows he'll never have another chance of an experience like this. Matt steals himself, shoulders his kit bag and sets out to fight his cabin. At that point, I was still up for it. So I looked at the boat and I thought, well, look, if she's been down in the Southern Ocean before and if they're sending her down there, then I'm sure it will all be fine. Maybe I was being naive, but I also had a bit of a trust in the fishermen that

I was going to be with. If they'd done that job before, then I thought, right, it'll be fine. I'll just put aside my nerves and put my trust in these guys and off we'll go to the Southern Ocean. And so, just days later, on Monday the 6th of April, Matt Lewis set sail from Cape Town, headed south for the Antarctic Ocean. There was a good deal of bravado on my part when we were setting out. So when we left the dock in Cape Town, I was just trying to put aside all my nerves.

I'd not slept so well in the couple of days before, and I was just trying to think, right, let's just get on with this, because it's a big adventure. But obviously I was nervous about being out at sea on a boat with people I hardly knew or had only just met. And when we finally slipped our moorings and sailed out of Cape Town, it was a nice day, but as soon as we got outside of the breakwater, the boat started rolling and I thought, oh crikey. I was just watching the waves go by, watching that as

we sailed out past Robben Island. It was exciting. You've got months ahead on a fishing boat, new adventure, and it's a lot better than being in an office in Aberdeen. Despite the fine weather and the crew's high spirits, it's a false start for the Isidro Havid. Just two days in, the chief engineer reports that there's a problem with the pumps, forcing them to return to Cape Town. Fishing in rough seas and weighed down with heavy cargo, it's not uncommon for ships to take on a certain amount of water. The pumps are essential for getting that water out of the boat quickly. Take on too much, and the consequences could be disastrous. The delays are mounting, as is pressure on Bubbles and the crew. They need to start fishing as soon as possible.

They eventually find someone to fit replacement pumps. The new ones are smaller and less powerful than they'd ideally like, but the engineers are confident they'll do the job. Before long, they're back out to sea and motoring south, trying desperately to make up the lost time. It's a decision that will come back to haunt them. with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads.

Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. For weeks, they sail southwest, crossing vast tracts of open ocean. As they plunge deeper and deeper south, they leave the warm, tropical weather of South Africa behind them, and soon enter the icy waters of the sub-Antarctic. They're heading for the small Atlantic island of South Georgia, 3,000 miles from Cape Town. It's the last dry land on the way to Antarctica. It's a cold, isolated part of the world, 54 degrees south of the equator.

It also lies within a band of turbulent polar weather known as the Furious Fifties. Here, warm, tropical waters collide with frozen currents of the Southern Ocean. Without any major landmass to intervene, fierce, westerly winds tear across the open water at up to 80 miles an hour, carrying with them intense storms and terrifying swells. But these converging waters also make the perfect home for a whole host of weird and wonderful wildlife, and the very reason Matt signed on to the voyage. So, you know, we had the albatross flying around the boat, and they are magic. They're big birds, two or three meter wingspan, and much more elegant than your average seagull. But also, we would get animals like fur seals, and occasionally penguins, and then even killer

whales, and the sperm whale. We would come out in the morning and it would just be rolling next to us, just, I assume, asleep, just resting. And as the boat was still, it was still also. And so you had these magic encounters with wildlife. On April the 22nd, the Sudha Havid finally reaches the windswept mountain island of South Georgia. Other than a small military base and a basic harbour, this remote spit of land is uninhabited.

It's a cold, wild, beautiful place, and the last lifeline to civilisation for anyone venturing further south. I'd say it's a small island, but South Georgia is actually 120 miles long. It's only maybe 10 or 20 miles wider and there's huge mountains with glaciers carving icebergs off into the bay it's um in a part of the ocean where it's below some ocean currents that keep the falkland islands just a little bit warmer than they should be so south georgia takes the brunt of the antarctic weather so you don't see another crew another another boat for

weeks. And then perhaps you'll be moving somewhere and you'll just sail past an iceberg, but the iceberg will be so big, it's got huge cliffs of ice that will be hundreds of meters high and big enough to show up on the radar looking like a small island. And it's just an enormous iceberg just broken free from antarctica and drifting up but they've not come for the natural beauty of south georgia they're here to trawl its bountiful fisheries every day the crew now deploy the long lines a huge network of fishing ropes reaching tens of kilometers in length each line bristling with thousands of baited hooks, which they plunge into the water and are dragged in the Sudur Havid's wake.

In the mornings, Matt walks the decks with his clipboard and charts, logging times and details of each line cast. He keeps an eye out for whales and dolphins, and scans the skies for gulls and albatrosses. The seabirds are drawn to the fish caught on the lines, and they can easily get tangled up themselves. But Matt notes that the skies are nearly empty. It's a bad sign, indicating that their lines won't be bringing in the large haul they're hoping for.

Day after day, the lines go out, but it soon becomes clear that the waters aren't as rich as they'd hoped. They're simply not catching enough fish. The owners of the Sudu Havid need to make their money back for the license they've bought to fish in these deep, cold waters, where toothfish should be abundant. They're expecting huge profits. Toothfish sell as a delicacy at £20 a kilo, and previous expeditions have been much more successful. So when the pseudo-Harvard had fished before, she would be catching, you know, tens of tons of fish per day.

And we were catching one or two tons of fish per day. So the hold was slowly filling up. And two months into the trip, we were starting to feel the hold, but it certainly wasn't months into the trip we were starting to fill the hold but it certainly wasn't the bonanza that they were hoping for. The crew joke that it's Matt's fault. He's the only Englishman on board and they say he's brought them bad luck. It's funny at first, but the pressure is building and tempers eventually start to fray. So the mood on board was, I think, frustrated.

I think some of the fishermen were annoyed. You know, you spent two months at sea and we were hardly making a profit. The various delays seemed to have cost them. Their rivals had already been fishing these waters before the Sudu Havid arrived. Their skipper, Bubbles, is feeling the pressure. Eventually, he decides to cut his losses and relocate the Sudahavid to an area northwest of South Georgia, another 150 miles or so from land, and more exposed to the expanse of the South Atlantic and its polar weather. With no land to break the swells, they soon notice the waters are less calm, the wave patterns less predictable.

They don't see any more seabirds in this stretch of water, in fact they don't see much of anything, surrounded by an endless, rolling ocean in every direction. But they do start to net bigger hauls. The crew are working hard, making up for lost time. The mood lifts, they laugh and swear and tease one another, competing to gut and pack away the mounting piles of fish, quickly filling the hold. But then, one morning, their luck changes. It's early morning on the 6th of June. Matt has been at sea for two months when he wakes up to an uneasy feeling. Something's wrong.

He stumbles out of his cabin and realizes the boat is being thrown around by huge waves. He hasn't seen weather like this since they set sail. There's a strong, icy wind, and a mix of snow, sleet, and hail pound the exposed deck. The sky is ominously dark. And I went out on deck for my first hour in the morning, and it was just crazy. It was like working, it's like a rodeo, but trying to work on a moving boat when it's moving so much, the waves are so big, that it made my job really difficult. I was only just trying to make

notes on a clipboard. The fishermen who were actually trying to use gaffs and use winches and you know trying to move line around they were having a nightmare that goes down to the cramped workspace below deck a metal room at sea level known as the factory this is where the fish are washed and gutted before they are lowered into the hold to be frozen. The factory floor is always covered with the guts and scales of the fish that have been processed. It's a smelly, crowded, messy space at the best of times. Today, as the storm builds, Matt can't believe what he sees down there. People are being rolled around.

If you imagine trying to work in a room that's moving but which you can't see the horizon, it's very difficult to balance. And so I got to my position in the middle of the factory where I was going to be processing the catch and looked around, but everybody was still working. People, I couldn't believe they could still work in those conditions with it rolling from side to side and pitching up and down. The fishermen were processing their catch, cutting the heads off the fish, taking the guts out, washing them, just getting them around the factory and getting them ready to freeze. And so I got on with my work. There's a strict hierarchy on board fishing vessels where the senior crew members, the skipper and the fishing master,

experience very different conditions to the rest of the crew. On the Isuru Havid, Bubbles, the skipper, and Bertie, the fishing master, spend their days up in the wheelhouse at the top of the boats, where it's warm and dry, while the men down below are cold and wet, working long, hard days. Matt accepts this hierarchy. He's the most junior member of the boat on his first voyage, and he spends most of his time below deck. But as the storm rages and conditions worsen, he begins to wonder if their captain understands how bad it really is down there. Along with the usual blood and fish guts, there's also a few inches of water sloshing about. It's gushing in through the open hatches in the side of the boat that are used to lower fish into the factory. And the water's not draining away.

Most days we didn't have much water in the factory, but this day there was water running backwards and forwards. It was just like a very nice sort of gentle sound at first. But when I was dissecting the fish, it started to get louder as more water came through. And the pumps that normally remove the water from the factory were playing up. They were blocking with all the scales and the guts that were being washed around. And they were not clearing the water. So more water was rolling backwards and

forwards across the factory. And it went from just a gentle tinkling sound to just being more of a cascade as it went from side to side. I said to one of them, you should go and tell the skipper or go and tell an engineer, get one of the chief engineers down, go and get clouds, go and get bubbles, tell them what's happening. And this went backwards and forwards with me trying to get the crew to go and get one of their officers to come and have a look. But nobody would come down. Matt seems to be the only one who's really concerned. Most of the crew have seen it all before. They trust the pumps and the ship to hold steady. But as the water level

keeps rising, more and more experienced fishermen begin to look uneasy. Still, none of the senior crew react. There were a couple of occasions when people went up to the bridge or went to the engine room to try and get some help, and nobody would come and look. In the end, I said to one of the mechanic assistants, I said, you know, you go and get the skipper. He said, you go and get him. He won't listen to me. The pumps aren't clearing the scales and fish guts out of the factory,

and the water isn't draining away. The hatches in the side of the boat are letting in more and more water as the storm intensifies. Things are beginning to get scary. There were waves exploding into the factory through the hatches. And when the waves were hitting these doors on the side of the hull, they were actually exploding into the factory. And you'd just get a shower of water exploding across the ceiling of the factory every couple of minutes and hitting the lights and going down the back of your neck matt looks around him

at the men who are continuing with their work at the water gushing into the room deeper by the minute he's in the middle of nowhere thousands thousands of miles from civilization, and he has a feeling in the pit of his stomach that just won't go away. A feeling that they're all in grave danger, and that none of the senior crew recognize there's a problem. Eventually, Matt persuades his cabin mate, Glenn, an engineer, to come down to the factory to help. Relieved, Matt stands by as Glenn inspects the pumps. So I got him to show me how to help clear the pumps and you know I can remember at one point

he was on his hands and knees trying to clear the guts out of the bottom of these pumps. So he was trying to show this to me, he knelt down with his arm down in this drainage well and then the water came rolling across and he just disappeared underwater. So I picked him up by the scruff of his neck and put him on his feet, and he was spluttering because the water was so cold. As Glenn catches his breath, Matt drops to his knees and desperately starts digging around under the pumps, trying to unclog them to let the water drain away.

And for a few joyous seconds, he thinks he's succeeded. The water level around him suddenly drops. And then I watched the water go down and I thought, wow, that's brilliant. I've actually unblocked the pump. And then I realized that the water was going down, which meant there was no more water rolling across because the boat had stopped rolling. And she was now lolling over to one side. She was actually lying on one side

and she stopped rolling and started just listing to one side. And all of the water was on the starboard, the right-hand side of the factory. And it was like almost up to the ceiling. The way the boat was still moving, the lights were fizzing and spluttering. And I, you know, just think, oh, God.

The Sudu Havid rolls onto her side, and with a huge bang, the catches on the external doors break under the pressure, letting in a crushing flood of water. Men are thrown sideways by the force of the torrent. Within seconds, the water in the factory is waist-high, then chest-high. The ice-cold seawater shocks the sailors now caught in its path. A terrifying chorus of screams in a dozen different languages soon fills the half-submerged room.

The boat is sinking. Fast. Next time, we continue with part two of Matt Lewis's stunning survival tale. As the Sudahavid is submerged beneath the freezing waters of the South Atlantic, indecision and incompetence take hold. Soon, for some reason beyond Matt's understanding, it falls to him to save them all. But with no training, limited survival gear, and no clear escape plan, they're soon caught in the grip of the storm, riding giant swells, cast adrift in a raft no bigger than a child's paddling pool.

As hypothermia and exposure to the elements ravages the survivors, it soon looks like they'll need a miracle to make it out alive. So I didn't see how I could make it to the morning, and I didn't see how we could be rescued at night, because there were no boats nearby, and we had no light and no radio. Then you start thinking, like, how long can I survive? That's next time on Real Survival Stories. To be continued...