Stowaways discovered by the Spanish coast guard on ship’s rudder

• After an 11-day journey from Nigeria, three stowaways have been discovered sitting on a ship’s rudder, according to Spanish officials.
• They were transferred to a hospital in Gran Canaria, the tanker’s final destination, where they received treatment for mild dehydration.
• In another incident that year, the Norwegian oil tanker Champion Pula was traveling from Lagos to Las Palmas when four men were discovered on the rudder.

After an 11-day journey from Nigeria, three stowaways have been discovered sitting on a ship’s rudder, according to Spanish officials.

The men are seen sitting on the rudder at the oil tanker’s stern, less than a meter from the water, in a coastguard photo.

They were transferred to a hospital in Gran Canaria, the tanker’s final destination, where they received treatment for mild dehydration.

It’s not clear if they sat on the rudder the whole way.

According to information gathered by maritime tracking websites, the Maltese-flagged Althini II traveled more than 2,700 nautical miles from Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.

Medical personnel evaluated the men at the pier where they were discovered, and they were quickly brought to a hospital, according to the Spanish news agency.

Stowaways had previously been discovered on rudders, which are substantial blade-like fins that are located beneath ships and are used for steering.

A 14-year-old boy who made the same trip from Lagos to Gran Canaria in 2020 claimed to have spent the entire 15-day voyage perched atop a sizable fuel tanker in an interview with the newspaper Pais. After surviving on salt water and sharing a hole above the rudder with the other men he was traveling with for sleep, he was hospitalized when they arrived.

“We were very weak. I never imagined it could be this hard,” he said.

In another incident that year, the Norwegian oil tanker Champion Pula was traveling from Lagos to Las Palmas when four men were discovered on the rudder. According to reports from the period, the guys spent the ship’s ten days at sea hidden in a room under the rudder.

In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of migrants traveling by boat from West Africa to the Spanish-owned Canary Islands.

The journeys are protracted, dangerous, and fatal. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) of the UN reported 1,532 fatalities along the route in 2021.

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