Lost at Sea

Lost At Sea

When six men embark on a 600 mile race from Galveston to Veracruz, Mexico tension builds. The thought of being on a boat in the middle of the ocean with twelve foot waves slamming into your vessel is unbearable. Yet these brave men leave port to begin the grueling race. The article lost at sea is the perfect example of the human instinct to survive in an unusual environment.
All the warning from the gut feeling at port to the radio weather warnings telling the crew that the boat was going to be battered was a sure sign the boat didn’t have a good chance of making it to the end of the race.
Eventually there’s no more time for warnings. At about 11:30 p.m. Travis Wright, a student at Texas A&M, jumped from his bunk to do his share of night watch. He jumped into a puddle. A puddle under the deck of a boat is the definition of bad things to come. He lifts the floorboard and a geyser of ice cold salt water smashes into his face. The water is coming in so fast they would only have about ten minutes to get everyone off the doomed vessel.
At this point in my reading I started to think about the Titanic and how hard it would be to get all of those horrified people off the boat and safe. Although these men didn’t hit an iceberg and everyone had a life vest this horrible and unfortunate event would still strike fear, panic, and desperation into anyone. It will make anyone not want to sail or be in the middle of the ocean. Just the thought of your boat or vessel sinking 80 miles off shore with no one within 15 miles of you is the most gut retching, heart sinking, horrifying situation anyone could be in.
After they manage to get everyone above deck they all grab onto anything within reach while the boat lurches onto its side. They all struggle to get their life vests on and fastened. One after another the men start to plunge into the freezing, black, and violent water. All the men swim for their lives, to get away from their doomed vessel.
At this point it starts to sound like there is no hope at all. Yet, all of those men still fighting for life is tremendous. The human instinct to live is above all instincts. It could be the difference between life and death in the situation these men are in.
If the instinct to live is the number one instinct, the instinct to help one another is the second. For a very long time those men floated on the ocean surface. All of that time those men helped one another survive. Then they get even more help. At about two a.m. a coast guard helicopter makes a low pass over the surface and spots the men. A rescue diver named Albert Shannon dives into the water. He lifts each man into a basket connected to the helicopter by a wire. Then the men are flown back to Galveston and rushed to the University of Texas Medical Branch. What those coast guards do is save lives and they did their job to an almost complete perfection that night.
Unfortunately all but one of the men, Roger Stone, one of the two safety officers, aboard the vessel survives their grueling encounter and recovers in a hospital in the University of Texas Medical Branch. That is why being lost at sea is the most incredible example of the instinct of survival going into play.