Real Survival Stories - Shipwreck off Australia: Dragged Towards the Rocks

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

A merchant vessel departs Tasmania. The scheduled journey time is two days. But 18-year-old Mick Doleman and his crewmates will end up at sea for far longer than that. When their ship goes under, the seamen will find themselves stranded in a vulnerable life raft. The hellish experience will involve near starvation, brutal weather, physical turmoil and tragedy, as it becomes apparent that survival won’t be possible for everyone on board…   A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins.   Written by Lewis Georgeson | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Jacob Booth, Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley.   For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions   If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit noiser.com forward slash book to find out more. That's noiser.com forward slash book. It's October the 19th, 1973, the dead of night. In the southern ocean, several kilometers off the south coast of Tasmania, a circular shape rises and falls atop the churning waves. The small, undulating object, often. a solitary splash of color in an otherwise pitch-black tableau of freezing cold water. It's a bright orange life raft, being lifted and lowered, tossed and turned, tested by the ferocious

winds that whip up around this southerly belt of the earth. Inside the luminous inflatable is 18-year-old Mick Dolman. Brused, starving, cold. Mick leans out of the light. raft frantically paddling against the wind and the waves he is using what little strength he has left because after more than a week at sea he has finally seen something that offers hope land an enormous jagged barren cliff face looms ahead squinting through the darkness mixed spirits rise we've seen or we thought we've seen a road along the side of the cliff that we're heading towards.

So collective wisdom was, well, let's get over and have a look, and then we can determine what our next action is. Behind him, eight other men in various states of exhaustion take cover under the inflatable's battered canopy. One of them, another Mick, able seaman Mick Power, joins his 18-year-old crewmate in desperately trying to steer the raft towards terra firma. Lactic acid courses through the men's muscles,

But still they paddle, battling against the open ocean. Spray lashed and panting, they crawled closer to the cliff. As they do, a sickening reality hits. When we got close enough, we realised it wasn't a road, it was just a part of the cliff face. And there's no way there's a car or anything going up and down that. And now there's an even bigger problem. Not only does the cliff face offer no signs of life,

and therefore no chance of rescue. but their efforts have dragged the raft too close to the rocks. They need to turn back. But as Mick and his crewmates attempt to paddle away, the waves fight against them. The current is too strong, and they're heading straight into a minefield of deadly, semi-submerged boulders. Suddenly, one of the men spots something else sticking out of the ocean. Something briefly caught in the moonlight, shimmering on the surface, seaweed. Slimy green tentacles dangle, invitingly.

The men scramble, leaning out of the raft, each trying to grab a handful. Mick summons a final reserve of energy and launches himself towards this lifeline. He manages to secure a palm full of kelp in his clenched fist. We spent the night hanging on to kelp to anchor us as best we can, and we'd lose it and then have to go and pull up some more kelp. Knuckles white, arms trembling, Mick and his pals grip the seaweed. It's all that's stopping a catastrophic collision with the nearby rocks. But as the night swallows them and the ocean roars, how long can they hold on?

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 suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Mick Dolman, a seafarer from Melbourne, Australia. In October 1973, Mick boards the Blythe Star, a merchant vessel docked in Tasmania. A ten-man crew are due to sail

from the port of Hobart to the north-west of the island. The journey is scheduled to take two days. But Mick will end up at sea for far longer than that, as he and his crewmates find themselves stranded in a vulnerable life raft in the middle of the southern ocean. This raft was really worked the ass off. It was in terrible state. We were toast really not much longer left than any of us.

The hellish experience will involve near starvation, brutal weather, physical turmoil and tragedy as it becomes apparent that survival won't be possible for everyone on board. If we can stay alive and keep working on them finding us, searching for us, we should be right. Little did we know that wasn't going to be the case at all. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is real survival stories. It's October the 11th, It's October the 11th, in Tasmania.

Hobart Harbour lies on the southeast coast of Australia's island state. The picturesque peak of Mount Wellington looms on the horizon, overlooking the busy, bustling port full of fishing vessels, cargo freighters, and private boats. Floating in the calm waters of the bay, the merchant vessel Blythe Star waits in the dock, ready to welcome her ten-man crew. Forty-four meters in length, the Blythe star is small compared to some of the other ships here. A coastal trailer, she's been transporting freight around Australia's southern islands for more than a decade. She's used to these waters.

And at around 6.30 this evening, she will leave Hobart bound for King Island, a small farming community to the northwest of Tasmania. One of the crew members, 18-year-old Mick Dolman, stands on the dock, getting his first glimpse of the boat that will be his home for the next few days. The blithe star is a scrawny jumble of ropes, rigging and cargo. In short, it isn't the most inviting of sights. Nick frowns and sighs. Hobart is a busy port. Those who work here, Wharfies, mingle with sailors who are either preparing to ship out or returning from stretches at sea. Laughter, singing, shouting and swearing echo around the heaving harbour. It's a hubbub of swapped stories, jockey conversation and constant Mickey taking.

Mick has always enjoyed the banter, so he thinks nothing of it when a passing dock worker sidles up to him and makes a snarky comment about his ship. He'd put a bit of a joke over. He said, hey, mate, where's your plimsel line? A ship's plimsoll line shows the level at which she can safely float on the water, marking a maximum submersion level for the hull. if a vessel's line is too low it's a sure sign that she's been overloaded with cargo he said it looks like it's on your funnel well for the plimpsil line to be on the funnel the rest of the ship is got to be underwater

so it was a bit of a joke but nobody paid much attention to it and off we went ignoring the signs that the boat may be carrying too much weight Mick and his shipmates clamber on to the blithe star only to find that the cabin is in complete darkness. Mick stumbles aboard, trying not to knock anything over

or injure himself in the process. It's quickly becoming apparent that this is not going to be a luxurious trip. I got on board and there's no meal, no nothing, because there's no power. Somebody had pulled the shore power cord, like a extension cord, out of the ship and threw it in the water. So nobody had a feed, nobody had lights or anything. Mick isn't one to complain, however. He's used to the hardships of life at sea.

He may be just a teenager and the youngest member of the Blythe Star, but he's from a family of seafarers and already has two years' experience as a professional mariner. Born in the 1950s, Mick grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Doveton. It was a tough working class. community, where he learned to handle himself from an early age. I was always in fights. I was a bit of a hothead. But I hated bullies. I'm not a big bloke. I made five foot seven. But I didn't care how big they were. If they were bullies,

I was happy to intervene on someone else's part. As the son of a merchant seaman, it seemed only a matter of time before the ocean came calling. But Mick's dad wasn't sure his boy was cut out for the rigors of seafaring and concocted a plan to show him the realities of life aboard a ship. Taking a short boat trip from Melbourne to Portland, Mick's father stowed his son away on board, and the weather for this journey was truly shocking. And my father really thought that's going to kill him.

He won't never want to go to sea after that. But I was the only one that actually got up for breakfast in the morning. Everybody else was too crooked. Sea lakes firmly established. Mick left school and almost immediately joined his first ship, a shell tanker called the Solon. This large industrial vessel was more like a vast floating town, home to hundreds of workers. The hours were long and the work hard. But the facilities were generous, cinema rooms, swimming pools and spacious sleeping quarters.

For Mick, not having to share everything with his five siblings, was the height of luxury. The boatswain, who was like a foreman at sea, said, well look, son, I'll take and show you where your cabin is. This is your cabin, there's your bathroom. And I said, who else sleeps in here? He said, no, that's your cabin. I said, I get to sleep in here on my own. Yeah, yeah, it's your cabin. I said, that's fantastic.

Many aboard the Solon new mixed dad from way back. So the older seafarers quickly took the young man under their wing, showing him to the pantry and introducing him to the ship's cook. Turned out the food wasn't bad either. They said, well, what would you like, son? I said, I'd like a steak. He said, okay, yeah, how would you like it? I would it mean, how would you like it on the plate, I assume? They said, no, do you want medium, rare, well done?

I said, mate, I haven't had a steak in my life, so I haven't got a clue. I'll leave it up to you. So he gave me a steak, I don't know what it was, but it got to very. Vailed in about three minutes. Three T-bone stakes later, it was clear he had made the right decision in becoming a merchant seaman. Despite his father's scepticism, it's a seafarer's life for Mick. He doesn't look back. I thought, I'm in heaven.

Can't get any better than this. A couple of years later, I'm in heaven. On a balmy evening in October 1973, the 18-year-old Mick is on the M.V. Blythe Star as it leaves Hobart. At a mere 371 tons, this coastal freighter is a far cry from the spacious luxury of the solon. This time, the food is basic,

and Mick will be sharing a cabin. But it's only a two-day voyage, which suits him great. He's keen to get back home to Melbourne as quickly as possible. I just met a woman or a young girl. I was only 18, fallen in love with her, and it was her 7th birthday that I couldn't go to because I had to go to Hobart and join the ship. The water is calm as the Blythe Star navigates her way through the archipelago of small islands, leading away from the Tasmanian coast. The bustle of the docks is soon replaced by the serene expanse of the southern ocean. The ship passes between the awe-inspiring Tasman Peninsula to the east.

a collection of rock faces that shoot straight up from the water's surface, reaching heights of up to 300 meters. To the west, there's Bunny Island, a remote collection of grass-covered beaches, a haven for wildlife. Once past these natural jetties, the captain of the Blythe Star, a Scotsman named George Crookshank, as a decision to make.

Which way to go? Hobart is in the southeast corner, of Tasmania. The star's destination, King Island, lies to the northwest, essentially on the opposite side of a circular route. So it's pretty much equidistant to travel up the east coast or the west. The captain's decision would usually be dictated by the weather, but today conditions are perfect. The water is as flat as a pancake. When it comes to choosing a route, it's a coin toss. Captain Crookshank heads west Despite a somewhat chaotic introduction

Now as the sun sets and they move into the open ocean Nick starts to enjoy himself This really is the life for him That night between 2 and 4 a.m. He even takes a shift at the helm It's a hand-steering ship So it's not easy work with the hydraulics or whatever I've got to put a bit more refurbies

to it. So I done my time, and then I think I did have dinner that night. That's the only meal I had. And then I went to bed. Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Samburg, Kate McKinnon, and Alison Janney. A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses only in theaters, August 29th. It's daybreak, and the Blythe star is heading west, about 10 kilometers off the south coast of Tasmania. The seas remain still as she starts to make a starboard turn to continue her journey north.

On the distant horizon, the sun rises above the waterline, and a spectacular orange glow ignites the lone freighter. If anyone were watching, the Blythe star's silhouette would look magical, a solitary shadow in a vast canvas of dawn blue. But there is nobody watching, no other ships as far as the eye can see. Which means that nobody notices the Blythe star turn and tilt. A starboard side goes closer and closer to the surface of the water. Where minutes ago, she was carving through gentle waves. Now she meets with increasing resistance. The weather hasn't changed, but something about the blithe star has.

That plimsoll line, the wharfie was teasing Mick about. Now it really is underwater. Any second, the ship should right itself. It should regain buoyancy and continue its journey. Only it doesn't. It continues to list. I got basically thrown out of my butt. Water can pouring down the Campaniaway.

That's an alleyway in the accommodation and started pouring into my cabin. Fuzzy and perplexed, Mick picks himself up off the floor and stumbles towards deck. He doesn't waste time getting dressed. As he rushes along the narrow corridors, the ship continues to list, nauseatingly to one. inside. Mick is soon splashing through icy cold ocean water. It's already knee-deep by the time he finds fellow seaman Malcolm McCarroll in the laundry room. What Mick sees next makes his blood run as cold as the water. Well, there was water pouring it, pouring it. And we just looked at each other and we both just sort of said, let's get out of here. Malcolm's desperate attempts to batten

down an open porthole are futile, as he is completely soaked by gallon upon gallon of gushing seawater. As the boat continues to tilt, what was once the floor is now a wall. Their starboard side, now the ceiling. Mick battles through rapidly flooding passageways trying to reach the deck. Waves cascade down stairwells as he struggles to stay on his feet in the torrent. Eventually, somehow, Mick makes it to the deck. where other crew members are already gathered. On the surface, at least, sea conditions remain perfectly calm. But the blithe star is foundering,

and lying at a near 90-degree angle in the water. We knew the ship was finished, and I thought, imagine dying standing on a bloody deck of a ship in freezing cold waters. I sort of resolved in my head that it's it. There's no option. There's nobody else out there. There's nothing.

With the port side of the Blythe Star now almost entirely submerged, the ship's lifeboats are inaccessible. Their only hope is the emergency backup, an inflatable life raft ready to be used in dire situations like this. Although ready is perhaps a misleading description. Designed for emergency evacuation, the life raft is housed in a solid white container that looks like a large square suitcase. The crew grabbed the white casing and toss it over the side. It floats exactly as it should, bobbing on the mellow ocean surface. A rope attached to the white case should, in theory, trigger the gas canisters inside to inflate the life raft directly onto the water.

But when a crewmate gives the rope a yank, nothing happens. The raft is not inflating. The men look down in horror. And there's something else. The boat's engine is still running, and the propeller sits directly below where the life raft is attempting to launch. Even if they can get it inflated,

it'll surely get sucked into the arc of this spinning metal, leaving any escape plan literally in tatters. One sailor, John Eagles, springs into action. The chief engineer, when the ship was sinking, he went back down in the engine room. and turn the engines off, shut the engines down, and got burnt badly on the leg. That endeavour, I believe, saved our lives. The propeller has stopped. That's one problem down, but the other remains.

The life raft still hasn't inflated. As the white case dances up and down in the water next to the sinking vessel, the ship's boson, Stan Leary, pulls and pulls at the release cord with all his might. until eventually. It's the most welcome sign that a seafarer could ever, ever see. It just goes boom, and then it just expands, expands, expands, and we all bailed in. Amid a flurry of splashes and shouts, the crewmates managed to scramble into the little raft. Off the ship, they may be, but they're not clear of immediate danger.

For starters, the raft is still attached to the sinking Blythe Star. I had the job at getting the painter, which is the line that connects the ship with the life raft. The last thing you want to do is be connected to the ship that's on its way down in the life raft. So as everybody was telling me, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. As Mick struggles with the knot of the painter line, he scans this way and that, instinctively doing a quick headcount aboard the raft. of a ten-man crew. He counts only nine. Chief officer Ken Jones is nowhere to be seen.

We can't leave without him, so I was still working on getting the knot which was freezing. He was in his cabin. Below deck, Ken Jones is trapped. Freezing cold water is pouring into his cabin, making it impossible to open the door wide enough for him to get out. Amazingly, given the circumstance. Ken has the presence of mind to do nothing. He simply waits until his room is fully submerged. He had to wait for the water to equalize

so he could get his door open. I mean, that's a smart, smart move. It was the only move he had, and if he didn't do it, he would have been dead. Still wrestling with the painter, Mick looks down to see Ken Jones swimming underwater towards them, Hopping up to break the surface of the ocean in between the raft and their stricken vessel. Ken is quickly hauled up into the inflatable, almost to the exact moment that Mick finally frees the raft from the ship,

and not a moment too soon. It's the most amazing sight I've ever seen in my life. The bow of the ship just lifted straight up out of the water and the ship just disappeared. wearing a pair of jocquettes and nothing else in the middle of winter. If I hadn't got in the raft, if we hadn't got the raft away, I would have had 10, 20 minutes at best before I was gone. Barely an hour has passed since Mick was first thrown from his cabin bed. Now he, along with the nine other members of the ship's crew,

sit exhausted, soaking wet and freezing cold, within a small, two-and-a-half-meter-wide dingy. The deep blue ocean shimmers in the morning sunshine, giving no clue of the mayhem that has just occurred. The blithe star has left no trace. Despite everything, its crew members allow themselves a moment to celebrate their miraculous escape. All ten of us have survived.

We're all just chatting away like a bunch of school kids, you know, excited about we'd survived. The euphoria, however, is short-lived. The captain's coin-tossed decision on which route to take east or west now has an unforeseen consequence. Nobody outside of this inflatable knows the direction the Blythe Star chose, which majorly complicates any potential search and rescue mission. It, in effect, doubles the area the rescuers will have to scour to find them.

I asked the captain. I said, did you get a Mayday off? He said no. I said, did you get a chance to get the portable VHS radio? No. So he got nothing. No Mayday sent. No radios aboard.

The ten men inside the life raft have no way of communicating with the outside world. They're at least six miles from the nearest land. They are, in short, completely. completely alone. And now the weather starts to turn. The tiny speck of orange is bounced and thrown across a heaving blanket of blue. It causes seasickness and even the most hardy of sailors. The winds pick up, pushing the inflatable south, further out to sea.

And for one of the crew, second engineer John Sloan, there is an even more pressing danger. He had medications on board the ship that he couldn't get, he didn't get. It's like I didn't get a jump or a long pants or anything like that. He didn't get his medication. He just rushed it out. He deteriorated very, very quickly. It's two days later, 10 kilometers of the coast of Tasmania. On board a flimsy craft in the bobbing swell, the crew

of the lost ship Blythe Star, try to maintain focus. Try to remain optimistic. It's been around 48 hours since their vessel sank. It should be around now that someone notices her failure to arrive at King Island. Surely a rescue will be launched soon enough. In the meantime, the crew keep busy. Everybody got allocated with some responsibilities. It wasn't much. The chief cook, or the cook, was in charge of the rations, and they were pretty ordinary rations, a bit of glucose powder and tin water. The crew might be getting organised, but the life raft itself is completely at the mercy of a weather system known as the roaring 40s.

Ferociously strong winds, common in the southern hemisphere. Right now, these gales are forcing them further away from the coast, away from any search and rescue mission being launched. If the craft continues on its current trajectory, the crew could easily freeze to death. One crew member, Ken Jones, tries to rally the troops because he can spot some blurry shapes in the distance. Ken Jones, who was a chief mate, was an inspiration,

a very, very smart guy, a great guy, brave, tough, tough guy. And he said, there's lights out here, and he was referring to fishing boats. He says, there's fishermen out here, and we should be able to get them there, not that far away. In terrible conditions, the image of a fishing vessel on the horizon looks like a ghost ship,

its nets silhouetted by the fading light of the day. Ken Jones waves a flare over his head in huge, sweeping arcs. The fire burns blood red in the dusk air. surely they've been spotted the ten men are convinced this is it they're saved Ken holds on as long as he can

the flare singeing his skin until he stops his shoulders sag the flare fizzles out he can see quite clearly that the fishing boat is changing direction but not towards them you said I'm sorry to say

that they've taken off, they've switched off the lights, their deck lights, and they're gone. The sense of abandonment in the raft is palpable. Mick is convinced that these fishermen were interlopers, fishing in Australian waters illegally, fearing being caught in the act, they ignored the blithe star's flare and fled. The international law and practice is that you're never, never leave a seafarer in such a circumstance. Seafarers leaving seafarers is unforgivable, or for any survivor, quite frankly. As morale on board drops, the intensity of the weather increases. Screaming gales hammer the tiny inflatable on all sides.

The men cling desperately to the craft's slick, rubbery surface. They huddled together, terrified beneath the canopy as they tumble over a series of stomach-churning crests and troughs. The sheer power of the southern ocean is testing the life raft to breaking point. There's no restraints in the raft, nothing to hang on to. We were just bounced around like toys. We're smashing into each other, headbutting each other, and baling water out as best we can to stay afloat like I had 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali at the end of it all. the torment continues. They're constantly shifting direction, closer to the coast, further from the coast,

almost entirely powerless against the savagery of the open ocean. The crew try their best to steer nearer to the land, putting out the life rafts sea anchor and paddling with what's left of their strength. But they make little to no progress. And then, after seven days at sea, things go from desperate to tragic. Second engineer John Sloan has been without his thyroid medication for a week. Manfully, he has attempted to do his part to be a useful member of the crew, but he's grown weaker and weaker.

He took his turn in paddling. He took his turn in whatever could be done. In fact, we had to argue with him not to sit back and rest. Very soon he passed away. and that really, that was a kicker, that knocked the stuffing out of us. You know, we half suspected that there would be casualties, but we'd beat the worst opportunity for that to happen

by getting off the ship. If we can stay alive and keep working on them finding us, searching for us, we should be right. Little did we know that wasn't going to be the case at all. That was a body blow, and that cranked it up to a much more serious circumstance than where it was. I'd never seen a dead person in my life

and he was right next to me. The remaining crew members cover John's body and decide to keep him on board. If help arrives in time, they can at least deliver him to his family. But after another 12 agonising hours of floating and hoping, there is still nothing. They resolved that they cannot keep John on the raft any longer. That was one of the deepest parts of the whole exercise was to bury him at sea, giving him a seafarer's funeral.

Meag, along with others, helped slip him over the side, and we hardly spoke to each other for a few days, except when we had to, because we had to stay alive and do our best. Dread and desperation gripped the men. Their meager food and water supplies are all but gone, and there is a creeping feeling that they are now just waiting for the inevitable. They paddle when they can, but people are increasingly unable or unwilling to keep the effort up. I was so angry because that pause in paddling took us way back out to sea again. It could sense that our stamina and our ability to continue to keep the fight up was waning. Then, eight days after the sinking, the weather finally starts to turn. The wind that seemed determined to drag them all the way to Antarctica finally relents, and

the inflatable is pushed northward for an extended period of time. Mick is under the life rafts canopy, lying listlessly on his back. He hears the relentless, never-ending slosh and slap of the water on the dinghy. And then he hears something else. His crewmates, Mick Power, calling out from the front of the craft. Everybody weakly scrambles towards the edges of the vessel. They are suddenly surrounded by towering rock formations, gnarled, jagged skyscrapers that loom out of the ocean.

The battered life raft is being sucked towards these giant hazards, caught in a vortex between three rocky pillars. They were huge pinnacles, I mean three, four hundred feet tall, and there was a small gap between them that we'd got sucked into and couldn't get out. We'd be toast, absolute toast. So me and Mick got a hold of the paddles and just paddled. I don't know where we found our energy, but we paddle and paddle and paddle. The current seems determined to draw them onto the rocks. With a gargantuan effort, Mick plunges his awe into the freezing water again and again

and fights for his life. With a final grunt and a heave, they escaped the riptide. Got through by the skin of our teeth and then we came out on the other side and could barely move it was in agony and Mick was in exactly the same. Both Mick's claps back into the inflatable, utterly spent. They've used up precious energy. There's almost nothing left in the tank. Darkness falls, and the remaining survivors of the Blythe Star lie fairly moving around the remnants of their battered inflatable.

These rafts, they're really just to keep you there for a short period of time, and then you get picked up and rescued and whatever you. And this raft was really worked the ass off. It was in terrible state. with their vessel and their bodies failing the men have little hope left to cling onto but as they drift through the night something catches Mick's eye a cliff face

not another rock in the ocean it's something more substantial more solid it's land the men squint through the blackness we've seen or we thought we've seen a road along the side of the cliff that we're heading towards. And so collective wisdom was, well, let's get over and have a look and then we can determine what our next action is.

Summoning his last vestiges of strength, Mick paddles the dinghy in the direction of the rock face. It's brutal. He is on the verge of hypothermia, at times hallucinating and blacking out. Somehow, he and his crewmates steer the raft in the direction of the cliffs. But as they draw close, it becomes obvious they've made a mistake.

When we got close enough, we realised it wasn't a road. It was just a part of the cliff face. And there's no way there's a car or anything going up and down that. And now they ventured too close to the cliffs. A labyrinth of sharp, sinister boulders poke out all around, half-hidden obstacles, each one threatening to tear a final deadly hole in the life raft. Dancing in the froth, slimy, black and green tendrils offer the men a lifeline. Mick throws himself to the edge and grabs onto the seaweed, arms

tremoring. He can't let it slip through his grasp. We spent the night hanging on to kelp, to anchor us as best we can, and we'd lose it and then have to go and pull up some more kelp. It's the following morning. Somehow, the crew have survived another night. Their dinghy remains in one piece, just. Through exhaustion or delirium, Mick drifted off during the night. It takes him a few moments to get his bearings, as one of his raft mates gives him a shake and wakes him up.

Birds core above in the cold morning air. and Mick's bleary eyes focus on his surroundings. Malcolm McCarroll, grab me, and see, wake up, wake up. We're close to the beach. Mick is only semi-lucid, but then the sight of the coast snaps him into focus. Last night's deadly rocks have been replaced by a large horseshoe bay, smatterings of sand lying at the feet of tree-covered granite walls. It's not the most hospitable of locations

but after nine days at sea it looks like paradise Mick doesn't waste a second it looked reasonable in comparison every other potential landing place and so myself and Mick Power jumped into the water which was partly stupid

because I wasn't a great swimmer at all but thankfully the water was only up to your chest freezing cold and this beach was full of boulders, huge, massive big boulders and rocks and pebbles, and it wasn't a beach at any shape or form. Finally, Mick and his crewmates are back on land. But no sooner have they arrived than it becomes depressingly apparent, their ordeal is far from over.

They're still trapped. Mick lies stretched out on the rock-strewn beach. His body numb with hunger and fatigue. Everywhere he looks, all he can see are impossibly steep cliff faces and seemingly impenetrable forest. It looks so inhospitable that one of the men even suggests getting back into the raft. Perhaps they should head out of the bay once more, in the hope of finding a more manageable entry point back into civilization. Nick cannot face this idea

And so he sets off Climbing the steep hills that surround the beach Each one covered with thick woodland He tackles this challenge with vigour Head down, marching into the dense forest But the terrain refuses to yield In the face of his youthful determination I endeavoured to find an exit to get out of the place

But to no avail and it was a disaster. Mick returns, breathing heavily, scratched and bruised. Escaping the bay is proving just as hard as escaping the sea. At least the beach does offer a chance for the crew to recoup some strength. Flowing down one of the cliffs is a stream. Mick walks over to investigate. There was fresh water, and we just all went up and devoured as much water as we could physically drink.

And we had a respite there for a period of time. More hydrated than he's been in days, Mick tries to traverse the cliff face again and again. But it's no use. He's gone for hours at a time, but never gets further than a few meters. Sometimes others come with him, but that doesn't help either. It is impossible to navigate this harsh, overgrown assault course. After another unsuccessful solo attempt,

Mick turns back once again. When he returns to the beach, he finds the crew spread out, dotted around the bay, each man in his own little world. Someone is missing. There is no sign of Chief Officer Ken Jones. When I come back, I said, where's Ken? And they said he's down there. And they pointed to where he was, and he was sitting on a rock.

And he took off his jacket and most of his clothes. and just looked out to sea. I went up and gave him a shake, and he was cold as anything. I could tell he was dead. And it broke my heart because he encouraged us to do the things that need to be done.

He did things that others should have done and didn't. But Ken was a true leader. Moments later, Mick also discovers the body of Chief Engineer John Eagles. Like Ken, John had been decisive and brave during your deal, particularly when shutting off the engines as the Blythe star sank. Both men have succumbed to exposure.

Extreme hypothermia confused their body temperatures, making them feel hot and causing them to peel off their clothes, exposing them to the elements. The weight of tragedy hangs heavily over the bay. But the loss of his crewmates also fortifies Mick's determination to get off the beach. So Malcolm McCarroll and I made a decision that we were going to go and we're not coming back. We're going to walk and walk and walk and we'll either find something, our rescue or a resource or we'll die.

But we can't sit here, can't stay here. The ship's cook, Alfie Simpson, wants to join Mick. and Malcolm for this final attempt. Staying on the beach will only end one way. This really is their last throw of the dice. Anything happens to any of us. We've got to keep going. We don't stop for anybody. We keep going until we get out of here. It's the next morning. Yesterday, after hours of slogging through the brush, Mick, Malcolm and Alfie had to rest, huddling up together under a large fern tree for the night. Now, as dawn filters through the canopy, the three men wake, feeble and famished.

They set off again. As the day heats up around them, the midday sun pierces holes in the tree line over their heads, casting forlorn shadows on the ground. The forest is slowly starting to thin out. The steepness of the incline starts to level off under their filthy, bloodied feet. Perhaps they really are making progress after all. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, Mick steps out from the forest and onto a road. A quiet, dirt road surrounded by dry shrubs, but a road nevertheless.

blistered and legs wobbling. They stick to this dusty track, following it as it winds onwards. And then the men stop. There is a distant sound, something rumbling through the trees. We heard a truck talking to each other saying, does that sound like a truck? We said, yeah, it sounds like a truck coming through its gears. I said, keep quiet. Let's listen to it for a second. The man turn and sure enough approaching from behind is a bright red truck After 11 appalling days, the end is in sight They can't blow this chance

Let's not scare this bloke off Because we look like convicts that have escaped from prison or something He or she might think let's get out of her Put it in reverse and nick off So we waited to the very last minute We ran down And just put our hand up I jumped on to the passenger side.

He said, who are you? Who are you? I said, look, we're off the Blythe Star. He said, no, you're not. They're dead. It takes a little back and forth to convince the truck driver, a forestry worker named Rod, that they are indeed surviving members of the Blythe Star. Turns out the search and rescue operation has already been called off, with the authorities concluding the crew must be lost to the sea.

And yet, here they are. living and breathing. Mick, Malcolm and Alfie clamber into Rod's truck, and soon enough rescuers are dispatched to the bay to recover the remaining survivors, as well as the bodies of Ken and John. While convalescing in hospital, Mick learns that the search for the Blythe Star was called off

after just four days. The rescue operation faced problems and confusion from the off. There had been no Mayday signal, no information conveyed about the Blythe Star's chosen route. The authorities didn't know where to look, or what to look out for. Nobody knew which way the ship was going, whether it was going west about to King Island or east about.

So instead of looking for a needle in a haystack, We've got two or three needles in haystacks all over the place because of the lack of knowledge aware that the preferred route was to get to there. The sinking of the M.V. Blyde Star and the tragic loss of three of its crew turns out to be a watershed moment in Australian maritime practices. New regulations are introduced regarding life rafts. Emergency position indicating radio beacons or e-perbs become mandatory. and procedures are updated that require captains to make regular check-ins with the maritime authorities.

These changes come about in no small part thanks to Mick, as part of his work as an official of the Seaman's Union of Australia. Throughout his career, he has fought tirelessly for seafarers' rights and protections. As for his own story, it takes 42 years before Mick speaks publicly about the Blythe Star. I chose not to talk about it at all shortly after the sinking. It has not gone away. He will never go away. Eventually, he decides to share his account,

to give the families of his crewmates' clarity about what happened. Now, more than half a century has passed since the catastrophe. Reflecting upon it, Mick puts his remarkable survival at sea down to the life he hoped was waiting for him back on life. allowed. I never ever considered that I was going to die. I wouldn't allow it. I just met a woman and I'd only been going out with her for a few months and she was off having a 17th birthday party while I was fighting on my life on a life raft and I wanted to marry that woman. I was only 18 but I was determined to make a life with that woman and I did and we'd be married. We're

I've been married for 50 years, and I've got two beautiful kids. My son's a seafarer, and my daughter's a teacher in the teachers' union. And I've got grandkids, and I'm going to make the best of my life and be a good father and a good husband. That was my driving force. Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Jules Mountain. As his surname suggests, he is a man destined to scale the heights.

After battling cancer and emerging with a new lease of life, he takes on the epic challenge of reaching the top of Mount Everest. But when an enormous earthquake causes the slopes of the mountain to crack and crumble around him, Jules is once again left staring death in the face. The whole sky, everything I can see, is full of snow and it's hurting. know and it's hurtling towards us. And I'm thinking, what do I do? What do I'm about to die? That's next time on real survival stories. Listen today without ads and without waiting the week by joining Noysa Plus. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started.