History's A Disaster

Harrison Okene: Survival Beneath The Waves

• Andrew

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The ocean doesn’t announce its plans. One wave hit, a tugboat rolled, and a ship’s cook found himself sealed in a bathroom-sized air pocket on the seafloor for 62 hours, listening to distant engines and his own breath. What happened next is a sharp study in fear, ingenuity, and the thin margin between life and loss.

We trace the Jascon 4’s final minutes off the coast of Nigeria, the chaos of inverted corridors, and the brutal math of survival: conserve oxygen, fight hypothermia, and outthink rising carbon dioxide. Harrison O’Keene turns a vent shard into a pry bar, coveralls into a lifeline, and broken wood into a raft just high enough to lift his chest from icy water. While early responders mark the wreck and withdraw, saturation divers mobilize from miles away, ready for body recovery—until a hand taps a helmet in the dark. From that shock comes a surgical rescue: a diving bell transfer, three days in decompression, and a medical close call with hypercapnia and the bends.

The story doesn’t end at the surface. We follow the aftershocks—media frenzy, nightmares, and a car crash that flips him into water again—into a decision most would fear: learn to dive for real. Training rewires trauma into craft. Harrison builds a career in subsea construction at depths up to 150 feet, finds new love, and chooses a home by the water he refuses to fear. Along the way, we unpack the gear, physics, and protocols that make deep rescue possible, from umbilicals and helmets to decompression schedules, while exploring the mental habits that keep a survivor steady when the lights go out.

If you’re drawn to true survival, maritime disasters, and the mindset that turns panic into a plan, this one will stay with you. Follow the show, share it with a friend who loves high-stakes stories, and leave a rating or review to help others find it.

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Special thank you to Lunarfall Audio for producing and doing all the heavy lifting on audio editing since April 13, 2025, the Murder of Christopher Meyer episode https://lunarfallaudio.com/


SPEAKER_00:

There are few things more terrifying than being buried alive. Throw in a confined space filled almost full of water, and the terror just ratchets up. And that's the situation Harrison O'Keen found himself in when the tugboat he was on sank and settled on the ocean floor upside down 100 feet below the surface of the water. So, what happened? I'm Andrew, and this is History's A Disaster. Happy New Year's everyone! Starting off the year on a positive note with a survival story. Tonight we're slipping beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean where Harrison O'Keen spent 62 hours trapped in a sunken tugboat. And tonight's episode is brought to you by Waddles the Penguins Fish and Dive Shack. At Waddles the Penguins, you'll learn how to dive like a penguin, explore the chilly waters of the Atlantic, and swim and frolic with the penguins. And when you're done with all that, they'll show you how to catch dinner. Hope you like sushi, because you can never trust the penguins cooking. They use way too much salt. In May 2013, the Jascon 4, along with another tugboat, was working to stabilize an oil tanker that had just filled up at a Chevron oil platform 20 miles off the coast of Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea. It was stormy and the weather had gone to shit, so there was a fear of possibly losing the ship. So these little ass tugboats are hard at work trying to keep this giant ass oil tanker stable. These boats are small compared to the tanker, but they are well built and made for this kind of work. The morning of the 26th, Harrison O'Keen, the 29-year-old ship's cook, woke up to some rocky seas. He had to hold on to the bulkhead for support as he made his way to start the day. He was in a hurry, still in his boxers as his mind drifted to thoughts of his upcoming three-day leave. He said his morning prayers and went about starting up the hot plates. As the ship's cook, he had 11 other hungry crew members to take care of. As he went about starting his day, in other cabins, crew members which included four cadets on industrial training from the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oran, Aqwa ibn State were fast asleep with their doors firmly secured behind them. The threat of sea pirates who routinely rob, attack, and abduct crew members of these little vessels forced vessels operating in the region to enforce strict security measures once it's dark out. Once they were in for the night, the 11 Nigerian seamen and the Ukrainian captain of the ship would bolt and lock the doors behind them. With his morning started, Harrison headed to the bathroom. With his thoughts on the future, he was rocked as a large wave hit the ship. The ship was smashed beneath the wave, broken in half, and flipped on its side. Harrison was on the ceiling, now the floor, bleeding from where the toilet fell and hit him in the head. He struggled to open the door as water filled the bathroom. Finally, pushing through the door, confusion on his face as he couldn't make out which way was which. The lights had gone dark and up was down and down was now up. He caught sight of three other crewmen struggling to open a watertight hatch. He tried to help as water poured into the ship. Out of patience, Harrison gave up and turned his back on the three and swam back further into the ship. As he swam away, a big rush of water sweeping through the corridor swept him into a bathroom attached to the second engineer's cabin. The water slammed the door shut behind him, slowly filling the confined space of the roughly four-foot square bathroom. Fortunately for Harrison, the water did not fill the tiny bathroom completely and left him in a small pocket of air. The crew of the Jascon 4 routinely kept the door shut so air could not completely escape the ship when it sank. He clung to the rim of the wash basin to keep his head near the floor turned ceiling. As he kept his head in the small pocket of air, he could hear the screams and cries of his fellow crew members. A rescue mission with nearby boats and a helicopter was started. Divers found the sunken boat, marked its location with a buoy, and tried to talk to the people inside. Harrison heard the divers and attempted to bang on the boat to catch their attention, but failed to do so. The rescue had to be stopped because the water was too deep and the crews there were not set up for a deep dive to check out the wreck. They had a crew coming in, but it would take time for them to get there. Harrison pushed down the panic and thought the exit hatch would still be his best bet to leave. He just had to get there and get it open. As he tried to leave his tiny bathroom oasis, the door handle broke off in his hand. Unwilling to give up, he broke a piece of metal off of a nearby vent and used it to pry open the bathroom door. As he worked, the screams of his co-workers had stopped and he believed they had escaped. When he finally got the door open, he swam into the darkened second engineer's cabin. He managed to find a couple flashlights and used one to find his way to the exit hatch. With the corridors full of water, there was no other air pockets, so he would not be able to work at getting the door open for long. He swam back and forth for the next several hours between his little air pocket and the watertight door. After a near miss and almost getting lost in the dark and confusing corridors, he scavenged around and found a tin of sardines, a soda, and a pair of coveralls he tore into strips and used to make a makeshift rope he tied to the door handle of the cabin so he could use it to guide himself back from the watertight door when he got tired. Without the rope, he risked getting lost and drowning. One wrong turn would be a death sentence. The corridors were dark, and the water was cloudy from the dirt and shit on the ocean floor being kicked up when the tugboat sank. Even with a flashlight, it was hard to see and find your way around. Next, to get some kind of break from the freezing cold waters of the Atlantic, he broke apart some wood paneling and tied them together to make a raft he could half sit on and get at least his top half out of the water. He sat on his little raft in near complete darkness and silence, with only the hum of ships traveling 100 feet over his head for company. He was cut off from almost all his senses. For all intents and purposes, he was in a makeshift sensory deprivation tank with just his thoughts on how he was going to get out and slowly passing the time with prayer and singing of church hymns. He ate his meager supply of sardines and drank his soda. His throat throbbed and his tongue peeled from all the salt water he took in as he swam. Viewing opening the hatch as impossible, he was out of options and decided to stay put. He made friends with the local wildlife as crayfish snapped and bit at him, trying to eat him alive as they opened up cuts on his body. He made futile attempts to shoe them away all the while the water in the bathroom slowly rose. He fought down the panic to conserve his dwindling oxygen supply. Hope was renewed though when he heard something outside of the ship. He grabbed a broken faucet and used it to bang on the ship, hoping against hope to signal someone outside. After some time, Harrison sees a light in the darkness of the water beneath him. He takes a breath and swims to find the source. Running out of air, he swam back and forth until he saw it. An umbilical cord, and at the end of it, a diver. This diver was one of six saturation divers working from the Luvek Tucon, a diver support vessel owned by the same company as the tugboat, and was the crew they had been waiting on. They had been laying oil pipe at a depth of 230 feet below the surface. They had been working 65 miles from the Jascon 4 when they got called to retrieve the bodies of the 12 men aboard the sunken boat. While body retrieval isn't part of their normal job, they just couldn't say no. While being so close, it would still take them time to get there. The divers would have to go through decompression before they could ascend the 100 feet to be at the same level as the Jascot 4. Plus, with the storm raging in the area, it would be slow going. 65 miles might as well be a thousandth when you can only do roughly 4 miles an hour. After returning to the air pocket to take another breath, Harrison makes his way to the diver slowly and taps on the back of his helmet. As the diver turns, Harrison puts his hand out in front of the diver's face to signal him. The diver calls back over his radio to base that he found another body. A body that reached out and grabbed his arm when Harrison realized he did not understand he was alive. The diver called back to Bass, saying he had a live one, and, I'm just gonna assume, requested a new pair of pants. Harrison tugged on his arm to get him to follow him back to the air pocket. He's almost out of breath. After a brief exchange using hand signals, since Harrison couldn't hear the diver through his mask, the diver leaves and quickly comes back with a bottle of water and makes Harrison drink it as he's slowly running out of air. The diver quickly leaves and comes back with a diving helmet. He was able to talk to the diver in his base and told how they were going to get him out, but he kinda passed out, so the diver had to pull him along behind him. He was moved from the tugboat to a diving bell and from there to the ship, where he would spend the next three days in a decompression chamber. He would not have survived returning straight to the surface after spending almost three days underwater. Due to the time he had spent down there, he needed to go through decompression to avoid decompression sickness, also known as the Benz, when nitrogen bubbles formed within the body's tissues and bloodstream. They were also concerned with his CO2 levels. Spending that much time in a confined space, there would be massive amounts of carbon dioxide built up. He was already showing signs of being in the first stage of hypercapnia, which is caused by too much carbon dioxide in the blood. Any longer in that tiny bathroom, and he would have died from carbon dioxide toxicity. Doctors would later estimate he had just hours before the carbon dioxide in his system hit lethal levels. Harrison believed they were messing with him when he found out how long he had been down there. He had lost all sense of time in the dark. When they checked his vitals and saw everything was normal, they let him go with the advice to go to the hospital. Advice he would ignore. He was in a hurry to get home. As the weeks passed, the media stalked the man who survived for so long underwater. To get a break from the media and the nightmares of the bed sinking, Harrison and his wife took a trip to Gambia and stayed at a seaside hotel. The water had no fear over him, so he couldn't keep away. He found further peace after taking a swim in the ocean. Weeks later, after returning to work, this time in an office, not on a boat. He was in a car accident on his way to work with a friend. His car went off a bridge right into the water. He blacked out for a few, and when he opened his eyes, he was upside down. History was repeating itself. This time he managed to get out on his own. When he got out and didn't see his friend, he dove back into the water to get him. With no injuries, they went to the police station to file a report, and they told them the car had to come out. So, good luck and get that shit out of the water. So, that's what Harrison did. He went back, dove down and tied a rope to his car and got it pulled out. Facing his past, he had a thought and he saw a new path in life ahead of him. He decided he was going to become a diver. And of course, he was the only one that thought this was a good idea. His older brother, Harrison had 12 siblings, told him not to do it. He thought Harrison had gone nuts. His wife ended up leaving him around this time too. So he was left alone. No kids, no wife, just him, his dog, and that bitch called depression. He had to do something, so he took the three-month diving course, not telling anyone until after he had done it. He faced everything life threw at him and came out better for it. He kept going back for more and more training, eventually getting certified to work up to 150 feet under the surface of the water. He would now go to work as a diver, installing, constructing, and making repairs to oil and gas facilities. He would end up meeting a new woman, get married, and have three kids, and bought a house by a lake with plans on eventually upgrading to a house by the ocean. Sky, despite everything, just loved the ocean. And that was the story of Harrison O'Kean surviving underwater for nearly three days. Thanks for listening, and if you like this show, please consider leaving a rating or a review on your Apple Choice. And you can reach out to the show at historiesandisaster at gmail.com with questions, comments, or suggestions. As well as following the show on social media, you know, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. Share the episode. Your friends will love it. And while you're at it, pet the penguin. Stay off the boat. Learn how to die. While you're at it, chase that dream. Live for today. Because tomorrow is never guaranteed. Thanks and goodbye.