A survivor says: ‘Glad to be alive, after a night of tragedy’

GUYANA-registered motor tanker Swift Dolphin capsized off the Corentyne Coast in Guyana’s waters on August 12 last just after midnight. 

Leon Augustus Persaud, 32, was steering the ill-fated vessel when it capsized. He was one of two survivors from the four-man crew.
And he told the Guyana Chronicle, earlier this week, that for him it was a night to remember.
“A bad night. A night of tragedy. I am glad to be alive; to be still here for my wife, my son and my loved ones,” he said.
The ill-fated Swift Dolphin was en route from Suriname to Venezuela. The Atlantic Ocean had been rough from the time the vessel left the port in Suriname around 11:00 hrs that day.
The motor tanker was eleven hours away from Suriname when the waves got heavier. As Persaud recalls, around 01:45 hrs in the morning there was moonlight and he was at the wheel when heavy waves slamming into the Swift Dolphin caused the vessel to begin rolling from side to side.
At this time Captain Gainram Rickiram, 55, ducked into the small wheel house.
“Captain looked at the billowing waves crashing against the tanker and said: ‘I don’t like how this boat is behaving. I think we going capsize’.”
As he tells it, on hearing this foreboding from the captain a sudden weakness convulsed in his abdomen and he said: “Wha! what you mean Captain.” The Captain nodded grimly in the affirmative and urged: “Slow her down.”
Persaud said he shook off his unease and focussed on the steering even as the ocean got rougher. The Swift Dolphin continued to roll from side to side, leaning more heavily at each roll.
Persaud said he held onto the rails in the wheel horizontal.
“The side of the boat was becoming the floor.” Then around 2:00 am, the beleaguered vessel began the final rolling. It rolled once, twice, then a third time in slow motion.
The Captain shouted: “Go help the man at the back cut the lifeboat loose.”
He let go; scrambled out of the wheelhouse now at an angle of 135 degrees but then immediately gave up – the tanker was taking in water from the sides; too late for lifeboats; time to abandon ship.

OVERBOARD
He took one last look at the Captain; waited until the Swift Dolphin was close to turning turtle and then plunged blindly overboard into a raging Atlantic.
That was the last he saw of the Captain.
Fellow sailor, Constantine Patrick, 52, who had complained of feeling unwell and was asleep in the lower cabin also failed to escape.
A little later he realised that both the Captain and Constantine had been trapped in the tanker, unable to escape.
Struggling in the water, he tried to get onto the upturned hull but was buffeted by waves. He felt moments of real fear when he tried to get onto the hull of the capsized tanker and the waves kept knocking him away.
He eventually swum around to the stern and finally managed to board the upturned vessel.
It was here that he found a fellow survivor, Anthony Sookdeo, the cook, hanging onto the upturned hull.
Sookdeo had been on the deck of the tanker when it capsized throwing him into the ocean.
Persaud and Sookdeo sat on the hull of the upturned tanker until daybreak. Then they started to wave at passing ships some distance away. Quite a few of these boats passed them without noticing.
Around 11:00 hrs, they attracted the attention of Spanish-speaking fishermen who came to their rescue.
“Just in time too,” Persaud said. “Dehydration was becoming a major problem and an hour or two later we both might have lost consciousness and drifted overboard, this time for the last.”
Harbour Master, Michael Tennant disclosed last week that efforts to salvage the Swift Dolphin had failed.

UNSALVAGEABLE
The tanker now lies at the bottom of the Atlantic, unsalvageable: the bodies of Captain Rickiram and crewmember Patrick trapped in its hull for eternity.
Persaud said his relatives want him to find a job on land but he wants to get back to sea.
“I love working on the sea. It is dangerous work but it pays better,” he said. He hopes to get a job on a trawler when the fishing season reopens in a few weeks’ time.

(By Clifford Stanley)