16. A Drop in the Ocean
Uncharted with Hannah Fry
BBC
4.8 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2024
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A fisherman is stranded in the ocean late at night. Completely alone, the clock is ticking. How do you find one man lost in the open ocean? Can he be rescued in time?
Producer: Lauren Armstrong Carter Sound Designer: Jon Nicholls Story Editor: John Yorke
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:08.1 | It's the dead of night on the 24th of July 2013. |
| 0:13.2 | We begin many miles off the tip of Long Island on the deck of the Anna Mary fishing boat. |
| 0:19.4 | There, experienced lobsterman John Aldridge is grappling |
| 0:22.4 | with two huge ice chests. They're obstructing his path to the bowels of the ship. He needs to |
| 0:29.3 | access a metal hatch, but weighing 200 pounds each, the chests are firmly lodged on top. John |
| 0:36.6 | begins to pull with all of his might at one of the chest's plastic handles. |
| 0:40.7 | Strong as he is, he knows he'll have to give it all his got. |
| 0:45.1 | And then the handle snaps. |
| 0:48.7 | John is shooting backward, tumbling across the deck towards the back of the boat. |
| 0:52.5 | His right hand grazes a guardrail but fails to grip |
| 0:55.6 | and he dives into a black, inky sea. |
| 1:00.3 | You're panicking and panicking and you don't know what's going on. |
| 1:04.1 | Your mind is just doing a thousand miles an hour. |
| 1:09.4 | The saltwater stings as he twists and turns to reach the glassy surface. |
| 1:15.3 | John shouts as loud as he can. |
| 1:17.9 | He's swimming, but he can't keep up with the boat. |
| 1:20.9 | The autopilot is driving it away at seven knots, and his shipmates are asleep. |
| 1:31.7 | No one can hear him. A large wave washes over and with that the Anna Mary is gone. It's just him and the open ocean. It's so quiet. Like you've never |
| 1:42.5 | been around silence until you've been in the middle of the ocean |
| 1:46.2 | and you're looking up at the stars and the moon and the clouds and there's not a sound |
| 1:52.9 | and it's just the blood in your head's pumping and your thoughts only one thought is gripping John now. |
... |
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