It was evening. After an early dinner, he wanted to go out on deck to get some air. But the whistle of the wind outside his porthole indicated it was gathering intensity; so he refrained. Despite the warnings regarding Cyclone Tauktae, he thought they would ride out the rough weather, considering the vessel’s size and its eight strong anchors.
Suddenly the barge started rocking, things fell off the shelves and he had to hold on to something to keep his balance. He decided to get into his bunk to try and get some sleep.
But two hours later, he was rudely awoken by loud instructions, asking all on board to wear lifejackets and ‘be prepared’. Just a precaution, he thought. Carrying their phones, wallets and passports, wearing overalls and ditching their heavy safety shoes, the entire crew assembled in a common space indoors. It was there that they heard that 6 of their 8 anchors had snapped, which meant the vessel had become quite unstable, and was at the mercy of an intensifying storm.
If their vessel broke free from all the anchors holding it to the sea bed, it could drift uncontrolled to hit the oil rig platform 200m away, for it had no propulsion of its own. (A platform has a lot of gas and oil lines. Colliding with those meant an instant explosion, consuming their vessel too.)
Sure enough, their last two anchors snapped with the strain of the wind and swell. The barge now swayed dangerously, at the mercy of the raging sea. The captain and the crew starting sending out SOS’s to the Navy and their base—over the radio, phone, WhatsApp—anything they could find.
Within a minute, the vessel had hit the platform. The impact was so hard that the barge got holed below the waterline. Water started gushing in. The crew started calling out for help. They were ordered to reach the deck and deploy the life rafts—12 on each side. But as they started inflating these, they realized almost all were damaged. There was just one functioning life raft, which was lowered. Around 10 people immediately jumped in. However, that raft got punctured when it hit the barnacles on the hull below the waterline, and the men were thrown into the sea. It all happened in two-three minutes. Some of those men are still missing.
A frantic captain contacted a Navy ship in the vicinity for instructions. As the rain intensified and visibility got lower, the Navy commander told the barge captain to wait. Bringing his ship close to the barge with the waves so high risked a collision.
But by then, the barge had started sinking. There was no option left but to abandon ship.
Leaving their luggage behind, the crew started jumping into the sea one by one. The barge started tilting precariously. When his turn came to jump, he was almost 50-60 feet in the air. He looked down at the water and hesitated. It was scary. But the ship was sinking. He jumped—the last to do so. Swimming towards a group of people, he joined them. They held hands to form a circle and reassured each other, their lifejacket lights glowing to keep them visible in the fading light.
They could spot no rescue ship on the horizon. The salty water stung their faces and burned their eyes. Sometimes they were pushed up into the air, sometimes the waves submerged them. The salt water triggered gag reflexes in them and they started coughing out water. Some didn’t know swimming—these men were panicking, flapping their hands and legs, tiring themselves out. There were 15-16 of them. Waves kept separating them, but they did not give up. They kept swimming towards each other. They called out to others floating in the water. The group got bigger.
After almost three hours in the water, they spotted a Navy ship. They began to swim towards it. But just as they reached close enough, it started raining, making the sea violent again. A wall of wind and sheets of rain accompanied by waves as high as a five-storey building engulfed them. There was panic. Faced with no visibility and gigantic waves, each of them realized with dread that some of them wouldn’t make it.
He heard people crying for help, calling their gods. Some wished to see their mothers.
He decided to close his eyes for a second. It was mainly because of the burning sensation from the salt water. When he opened them again, it was around midnight. He looked around and realized that the group he was with now had only six men.
Before he could process that, he realized that the Navy ship was close enough. The sailors on board threw down a rope ladder and everyone at once started scrambling for it. He saw people pushing each other, stepping on one another just to get to the ladder. As he grabbed the ladder and tried to climb, the person above him slipped and accidentally kicked him. Thrown into the water, he searched for something to keep him afloat. Spotting a lifebuoy, he reached it and grabbed it. He feebly shouted to the people on board to pull the lifebuoy up, only to realize that there was no rope attached to it. He tried to swim towards the ladder. But a wave out of nowhere pushed him away. Within minutes, he had drifted far away, with the ship already out of sight.
He realized he was all alone. There was not a soul around; just miles of water stretching to the horizon. Gradually, the lights on his lifejacket went out. It was pitch dark.
At that point, he realized he was going to die. And be washed up on the shores of Gujarat or Oman, wherever the waves carried him. The water kept whipping his face, preventing him from falling asleep, till dawn broke.
It was then that he spotted a naval ship. He didn’t know and didn’t care if it was the same one. His fatigued brain willing his limbs to move, he began to swim towards it. The ship fortunately spotted the survivor, approached and created a lee for him. A Navy chopper flew over him. There were men on deck looking down at him. That’s when he knew he was getting out of there. Alive.
This is the horrific account given to the media by Varghese Sam Eralil, 27, who was among the 261 people on board Barge P305 that went adrift due to Cyclone Tauktae, before sinking in the Arabian Sea on May 17, 2021. Though 186 crew members have been rescued by the Navy, 71 dead bodies have been recovered, 18 of whom are unidentified, at the time of writing. There is no trace yet of 11 of the 13 personnel who were on board tugboat Varaprada, which also sank that fateful day in the cyclone. Decaying, unidentified bodies have washed up on the coasts of Maharashtra and Gujarat; so the missing list may become shorter once the bodies are identified.
A marine disaster that has claimed 71 lives and traumatized hundreds. 71 families bereft of their breadwinner.
A disaster that could easily have been averted.
What exactly is Bombay High? It is India's largest offshore oil field. Situated some 161 km north of the Mumbai coast, it has a string of oil and gas rigs in the sea. It produces 14% of India's oil requirements and accounts for 38% of all domestic production. Barge P305 served as accommodation, like a floating hotel, for workers contractually employed on oil rigs and platforms of the government-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). Barges like these are ‘dumb’ vessels, meaning they have no propulsion and have to be towed by tugboats. They are anchored close to drill rigs.
ONGC, which operates the oil field, had contracted Afcons Infrastructure Limited for an offshore project which, in turn, had subcontracted Mathew Associates for the workforce. Smaller companies were also subcontracted for specialized work. The whole country was aware of Cyclone Tauktae almost a week before that fateful day. It is inconceivable that the parties concerned did not know about this, or how devastating a cyclone can be in unsheltered waters.
If barge P305 had returned to shore a day or two earlier, like the barge Trinity Nissi which was right next to it did, none of this would have happened. But someone took a decision to keep the barge in that location and not return to a safe harbour, the port of Mumbai being just 8 hours of sailing away. P305 was moved only 200m away from the oil platform and remained in open water, after all the workers on the rigs and platforms were asked to stop work on May 15 and return to the barge. That was the only precautionary measure taken.
So who was responsible for this blunder? Was this decision not tantamount to murder? Who decided that the barge must remain offshore? Was it ONGC, the principal employer, who reportedly sent out a routine advisory to all its floating installations to ‘shift to safe locations’ but did nothing to enforce it? Was it Afcons Infrastructure, who thought that it didn’t make sense to go back with only two days of work left to complete the project, and thus save money on barge rent and transportation charges? Was it Mathew Associates who wanted the hired crew to complete its labour contract before being released to go home? Was it the barge owner Durmast Enterprises who may have vested interests of its own, like collecting barge insurance, maybe? Or was it the barge captain, whose body was washed ashore days later, who allegedly ignored the cyclone warnings and thought it safe to remain in that location? Was he coerced to stay there by the powers that be? As per marine law, a ship’s captain has overriding authority to take any decision which, in his professional judgement, is necessary to maintain the safety and security of the ship. But who knows what took place behind the scenes?
A joint high-level inquiry has begun, I hear, which will report its findings to the Petroleum Ministry. I wonder who will be held responsible for this ‘murder’ of 71 seamen. ONGC and Afcons Infrastructure have already placed the blame on the missing barge captain. So convenient. If it was really the captain’s decision, I fear that he has already paid the price for it.
So tragic and so avoidable. It is high time seamen’s lives are given the value they deserve. They deserve to be safe and be able to go home after work, like everyone else.
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