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THE three men who sat on a lightly laden 51,308-dwt Maltese product tanker, Alithini II, were rescued by the Spanish coastguard after 11 days at sea having travelled 2,800 miles from Lagos to the Canary Island and suffered dehydration and hypothermia.
Throughout the journey, at least three migrants and refugees had been hanging onto the narrow metallic rudder, with their feet dangling just a few feet above the water.
It is not the first time stowaways have been found travelling on the rudders of commercial ships to the Canary Islands, which is located 60 miles off the coast of Morocco.
In late 2020, Spanish authorities identified six others travelling from Nigeria on the rudders of two tankers.
One of those who arrived in 2020 was a 14-year-old boy who narrated his harrowing two-week journey to the Spanish daily El Pais.
He described how the stowaways had to take turns sleeping because there was enough space for only one person to lie down at a time; how there was a fight and he was nearly thrown off the rudder; how they got cold and wet and it would take hours to dry off; how urine turned green after drinking seawater.
Migration adviser to the Canary Islands, Txema Santana, estimates that about 1,000 migrants and refugees had died or disappeared trying to reach the Spanish archipelago this year.
As of November 15, nearly 15,000 migrants and refugees have made it to the Canary Islands by sea this year, down 18 per cent from the same time in 2021, according to Spain's Interior Ministry. Most make the long journey from West Africa on small inflatable rafts.
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