The Spanish Coast Guard has rescued three men hiding at the helm of an oil tanker that arrived in Las Palmas from the Nigerian city of Lagos, writes BBC. The men sat on the rudder just above the surface.
In a photo posted to Twitter by the Coast Guard on Monday, three men are seated at the helm of the oil and chemical tanker Alithini II. All three were taken to a hospital in Gran Canaria and treated for severe dehydration. For now, though, it’s not entirely clear whether they spent the entire eleven-day voyage sitting at the helm.
The Maltese-flagged Alithini II sailed more than 2,700 nautical miles from Nigeria. Txema Santana, a journalist and migration adviser to the Canary Islands government, tweeted: “They are not the first and they will not be the last. Black passengers aren’t always so lucky.”
They left Nigeria more than a week ago, time they spent at the helm of the ship, very close to the water. The odyssey of survival goes far beyond fiction. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last. Illegals don’t always have the same luck.
📷 @salvamentogob pic.twitter.com/3pJfsBpkeE
— Txema Santana ✳️ (@txemita) November 28, 2022
The number of migrants attempting to smuggle themselves onto ships sailing from West Africa to the Canary Islands has risen sharply in recent years, also apparently due to the tightening of controls on routes in the Mediterranean Sea. writes The Guardian.
This is far from the first instance where people have tried to hide at the helm of a giant tanker. In 2020, a 14-year-old boy spent a fortnight at the helm of an oil tanker which was also sailing from Lagos to the Canary Islands. He survived the saltwater journey and took turns sleeping in the hole above the rudder with other men he traveled with. He was hospitalized upon arrival.
In the same year, four men were found at the helm of the Norwegian tanker Champion Pula, sailing from Lagos to Las Palmas. Reports at the time said the men hid in a room behind the wheel during the ten-day voyage.
