Not unlike stowaways that hitch a ride on a plane's landing gear...huge risks to say the least!

Three stowaways make 11-day journey on oil tanker’s rudder to Canary Islands

Three stowaways were found on a ship’s rudder in the Canary Islands after an 11-day ocean voyage from Nigeria, Spain’s maritime rescue service said.

The men found on the Alithini II oil tanker at the Las Palmas port on Monday afternoon appeared to have symptoms of dehydration and hypothermia and were transferred to hospitals on the island for medical attention, according to Spain’s Maritime Safety and Rescue Society.



The survivors were all from Nigeria, the Spanish government’s delegation in the Canary Islands said. One of them remained hospitalised on Tuesday.

The maritime rescue agency, known as Salvamento Marítimo, shared a photo of the three men sitting on top of the rudder under the ship’s massive hull with their feet hanging only a few centimetres from the water.

According to the MarineTraffic tracking website, the Malta-flagged vessel left Lagos, Nigeria on November 17 and arrived in Las Palmas on Monday. The distance between the ports is roughly 4600 kilometres.



Other people were previously discovered clinging to rudders while risking their lives to reach the Spanish islands located off north-west Africa. Salvamento Maritimo has dealt with six similar cases in the last two years, according to Sofía Hernández who heads the service’s coordination centre in Las Palmas.

Migrants may seek cover inside the box-like structure around the rudder, Hernández explained, but are still vulnerable to bad weather and rough seas. “It is very dangerous,” she said.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/ ... 5c2e1.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63791372

Yeah, they probably lived in luxury in Nigeria and just decided to hitch up and get free stuff.

Other than that there is no way they travelled anywhere on that. They must have just climbed up there from a dinghy.

Gary Small wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:58 pm

John Bingham wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:30 pm Yeah, they probably lived in luxury in Nigeria and just decided to hitch up and get free stuff.

Other than that there is no way they travelled anywhere on that. They must have just climbed up there from a dinghy.

The truth is I don't really know but I've seen some stuff on YouTube about immigrants abusing the hospitality of European nations for example this video in Ireland.


I can't really comment because I have no idea what's actually happening in Europe because I'm not there.

I've seen a lot of videos on YouTube about racists constantly screaming "they are taking our jobs". "They abuse the hospitality of European nations". "They steal our women". Doesn't mean that I think everyone out there is a racist....

mannanman wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 9:58 pm

John Bingham wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:30 pm
Other than that there is no way they travelled anywhere on that. They must have just climbed up there from a dinghy.

Possibly but during my time in the SBS it was really difficult to get onto a container ships rudder when at speed, even with my teams expert training.

They hold onto wheel landing gear so this isn’t that difficult to imagine.


(The boathouse is blue and green by the way)

Among the risks for stowaways in the aircraft landing gear is the crush issue. There is actually not a lot of obvious space, without some real knowledge of where and how it all folds up when it retracts.

From those photos, though, I would imagine that there is some limited free space in the area above their heads. Sufficient for enough brave, but desperate folks?

That red oxide shows the waterline. That ship has been unloaded and is in port, it will either be loaded with more goods or ballast but it isn't navigable yet. The rudder would of course be far underwater, so I'm not sure about how much use the box-like structure around the rudder would be. Even if none of that applied, and they traveled all that way on a rudder with its top out of the water (?) the turbulence from the propeller and sea would wash them off in no time. Fuck knows.