When this Monday they felt the ship’s engine slow down to almost a stop after a week of sailing, the two Nigerian stowaways were probably taken aback: there was no port to be seen, only the ocean… and 78 people risking their lives on the ship. european dream.
Two stories on the edge had just crossed over on the high seas some 132 kilometers from Gran Canaria: on the one hand, a 15-day canoe trip from Senegal; on the other, such a dangerous voyage or more than eight days from Nigeria in the aft hole where the rudder stock is inserted into the hull. But it would not be known until hours later.
At around 10:10 p.m. this Monday, the mooring crews at the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria discovered that under the stern of the MSC Marta, a huge container ship from Togo bound for Italy, there were two men lying on the rudder blade, a scant meter of water, according to sources from Salvamento Marítimo and attested by photos provided by witnesses to EFE.
They were under a huge ship, 275 meters long and 40 meters wide, but in a hole so small that they could not stand up or sit down, only lie down, just as they were discovered. In fact, Salvamento had to launch a zódiac to pick them up, because the Salvamar Nunki, on duty in the port, could not get close.
A Police spokesman has confirmed to EFE that they are two young Nigerians aged 18 and 22, who were transferred last night to the Doctor Negrín Hospital to undergo a medical examination.
The two assure that they slipped into the helm hole in Lagos (Nigeria) and have already been returned to the captain of the MSC Marta, with the expectation that the regulations on stowaways will be applied to them, according to which it is up to the shipping company to guard them and organize his return to Nigeria, from Gran Canaria or from the future stops of the ship.
According to the course recorded by the maritime traffic monitoring website “vesselfinder.com”, the MSC Marta left Lagos on July 2, stopping in Lomé, the capital of Togo, two days later, and, after its current stop in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria plans to head to the port of Gioia Tauro, in southern Italy.
This is not the first time that stowaways have arrived in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria hidden in the hollow of a ship’s wheelhouse.
On June 17, two young Ivorians were detected on another container ship, the MSC Shaula, who continued on the same ship to Italy; and on November 28, three Nigerian men today welcomed by the Church appeared on the oil tanker Alithini II, after getting Spain to process their request for international protection for humanitarian reasons.
But the case of these two young Nigerians has an unusual characteristic, since they were involuntary and anonymous witnesses of another rescue: that of a canoe with 78 people.
The container ship in which they were hiding is the same ship that Salvamento Marítimo had asked to approach that vessel to accompany it until the rescue ship, the Guardamar Calliope, arrived from the port of Arguineguín.
The MSC Marta is such a large ship that it was unfeasible, as well as dangerous, for it to try to help the occupants of the cayuco, beyond placing itself close to them, in a position in which its hull would act as a parapet against the wind. Thus, next to the cayuco, the ship was there for at least an hour and a half, from 2:00 p.m. to around 3:30 p.m. (in the Canary Islands), when she resumed her original course towards the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
On board the cayuco, which the two stowaways could probably see if they leaned out of the rudder hole, there were 72 men and six women, seven of them minors, according to the count on land provided by the Red Cross (Salvamento had provided this Monday initially the figure of 86 occupants).
They had left Bargny, a small town in Senegal located a few kilometers south of Dakar, and had been at sea for 15 days, according to what they have recounted when they received the first assistance at the Arguineguín dock, from where it was necessary to transfer seven of them to health centers for different ailments.
When a rescue plane located them from the air, it was initially thought that it was another canoe with 200 people of which there has been no news since it left Kanfountine, a town in southern Senegal, also a fortnight ago, on June 27. .
It is expected that the same rescue plane will resume its search on Tuesday, while warnings are issued to navigators again.
