The millionaire who rescues migrants at sea
by Giles Tremlett
(Continued from the previous issue)
Both boats yawed and rolled in the swell. In Buzunehs overstuffed fishing boat, people vomited over each other. Heat from bodies packed tightly together and from the engine added to the fear, thirst and claustrophobia. Everyone was very frightened, said Buzuneh. They told us we would be rescued in six hours After 11 hours we were very scared. With this small boat it is impossible to go for a long period of time, or for a long distance.
The next morning, below deck on the fishing boat, Buzuneh had a small satellite phone thrust into his hands. The smugglers men on the boat had called MRCC Rome, and ordered him, as one of the few English speakers, to transmit their coordinates. Soon a call came through to the Phoenix, directing it to find the boat, which was 30 nautical miles away. Catrambones team had already launched a camcopter drone, which now headed towards the location Buzuneh had specified, and soon the drone was close enough to make out a blue fishing boat packed with people, doing the characteristic drunken zig zag of a small boat struggling to maintain a steady course in a big sea. They just move like ants out there, being pummelled by the waves, Catrambone told me later. With the position and direction of the boat established by the drone, the Phoenix set out to intercept it. Soon a small yellow dot appeared on the radar screen; Cauchi peered through his binoculars to see the blue hull appear on the horizon. The boat sat low in the water, a sign that it was bearing the weight of hundreds of people.
Cauchi directed the rescue operation from the bridge of the Phoenix, which stopped about a mile away from the overladen fishing boat. He ordered the speedboat lowered and it soon sped off with three crewmen, a doctor and a huge sack of life jackets on board. Every time we are sent to an operation, I think sooner or later I will have a heart attack, because you are always thinking what will go wrong, Cauchi said. It needs to be done carefully. The speedboat approached from the back, to prevent people lurching to one side and capsizing their boat.
They were ordered to sit down and to allow the women and children off first. A group of teenage girls, alternately smiling nervously and grimacing with fear, were lowered onto the speedboat. The Phoenixs deep hull acted as a barrier, calming the waves on the lee side, where the girls were pulled aboard. On a second run, smaller children appeared, as young as three, dwarfed by their orange life jackets and clinging to their mothers. A smooth routine followed: the speedboat went back and forth, carrying 15 people at a time. The fishing boat rose slowly in the water as it was emptied, though the upper deck kept filling as the cramped human cargo below deck crept out of the narrow, square hatches.
I joined the speedboat crew as they bumped across the open sea to pick up another group of migrants. When I clambered onto the fishing boat after the last men left, it occurred to me that an armed smuggler might be hiding below deck, waiting to sail the boat back to Libya. But nobody was there. (Catrambone later told me he had once experienced the same sensation, and ended up hollering through the hatch, telling anyone still there to come out or face his wrath.) Water was pooling beside the still-throbbing Hyundai engine. Both decks were a mess of water bottles, discarded scarves and shoes, half-eaten packs of cheese triangles and little drawstring bags with pictures of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Plastic bags and other rubbish floated around the stinking lower deck. A small plastic bag can easily block the pump. If the bilge pump stops, you are done, said Cauchi. The smugglers had also put in new unpainted wooden struts to ensure the upper deck did not give way under the weight of 150 people. Empty boats are valuable, and during a recent rescue, three Tunisian fishing boats approached while Catrambone was helping get the last men off. They were signalling for us to come over and talk, Catrambone recalled. Our thought was that either they wanted to kidnap us or take the boat. Its better not to talk to them.
Back on the Phoenix, one girl, her trousers covered in vomit, collapsed as soon as she got on board. Mostly there was quiet relief as energy snacks, water bottles, blue towels, woollen socks and thin white, wind-blocking protective overalls were handed out. After a few minutes of stunned silence the small children, miraculously, began playing.
Later in the day, when 106 survivors from Jobes inflatable boat were transferred onto the Phoenix from a rescue boat chartered by the Belgian branch of Doctors Without Borders, it became clear how successful our first rescue had been. On Jobes boat, which had called the MRCC on a satellite phone that morning, the rescue effort had gone badly wrong: three people drowned at the last moment, and as air leaked out of the inflatable boat, he had watched a panic break out as five or six people fought to grab the rope ladder lowered to them. Unable to swim, he decided to sit still, but more than a dozen people fell into the sea. Another Gambian, Abubacarr Gibba, aged 27, fought to get onto the ladder, fell in the water, climbed out and then fell back in. I cant swim. I always said I was like a big stone, he said. But the sea refused to drag him down and when he broke surface a second time and began vomiting gasoline-tanged sea water, a friend urged him to reach a life jacket that had been hurled into the water. I managed to swim, which I had never done in my whole life. The inflatable boat, he thought, would not have lasted another hour.
For the next 48 hours, a small sample of 21st-century African migrants to Europe with the addition of a few Bangladeshis lived squashed together on the Phoenixs two outside stern decks, telling their stories. For some, the sea had been a minor hardship compared to what happened before. Libya is hell for black people, said Jobe, who still had wounds on his knee from a beating. On his first day in Libya, 40 of his group were kidnapped by armed men who robbed them. They shot a friend in the leg, he said. Buzuneh and the other Eritreans had each paid $4,000 to travel via Khartoum, in Sudan. I didnt think it would be this difficult, he said. People think Europe is heaven.
The teenage girls remained quiet about their ordeal. Jobe knew why. Every night Libyans come with their guns and take three or four of our women, he said. If you cry he will beat you. Then maybe after he will give you one packet of biscuits. On deck a couple of teenage girls no older than 15 saw Maria Luisa as a confidant. Men not good, one explained, pointing at her own body. After two summers of regular missions and taking professional seafarers exams, Maria Luisa has matured beyond her years and learned to hide her own horror at the stories she hears. Sometimes it is too overwhelming, and you just want to say: I cant believe they are really doing this to you. But you cant say this because they need to talk, and they need to be heard.
The Phoenixs upper deck was packed. Men trod on each other, argued briefly over the tiny spaces available to stretch out, and continued to vomit. Mostly, though, they slept, ate the freeze-dried Adventure Food vegetable hotpot that had been heated up with boiling water, and wondered about the future. I dont know what will happen tomorrow, said Gibba But we think we will feel safe in Europe. Some wanted to go to Britain, because they knew the language. It will be easier, because we in Gambia were colonised by England, reasoned one man with a brother in Leicester. Others wanted to go to Germany, or Switzerland, or simply did not care.
After the second night, they awoke to see the low coastline of Sicily before the Phoenix entered the harbour at Augusta. A dizzying array of Italian organisations waited on a cargo dock beside a mountain of scrap metal. The migrants stepped down the gangplank to touch European soil and walked on to a tented processing camp with doctors, fold-out beds, food and tents proudly bearing the name of Italys Ministero DellInterno. UNHCR officials were ready to help process asylum petitions, which Eritreans can expect to have accepted. They were moved on to permanent camps by the morning, though many flee these immediately, knowing that EU rules mean that if they were to be fingerprinted by Italian police, other European countries could send them back there. Further along the coast, Eithne, an Irish naval service patrol boat, was delivering a similar number of people. Another thousand migrants had made it to Europe in a single, not very remarkable, day.
We sailed back to Malta through rough sea, the white-tops occasionally dumping their froth on the deck, while Cauchi stared out of a window and marvelled at how stable the boat remained. By the time we docked in Malta again, the European Union had adopted a more aggressive stance, agreeing to establish a 12m military operation to sink boats used by smugglers. Catrambone likens military and law enforcement attempts to stop migration to the war on drugs. The problem will not go away, he says, until there are no users. It just dont look like theres any fricking chance of any alternative happening right now, he said. There is no easy answer. That is why I am saying you really have to focus in on saving peoples lives first.
Catrambone says he would close Moass Mediterranean operation if Europe had something better to offer, but that does not seem likely to happen soon. He once told me that he could have replaced the whole Mare Nostrum operation with something similar for a third of the cost, and he continues to think in ever bigger terms. He would like to have $10m a year to charter a new boat, a 45-knot Australian-built catamaran ferry named HSV-2 Swift, which is two and half times the size of the Phoenix. It could make the trip from the rescue zone to Sicily in just five or six hours. That may seem fantastical - but it is no more so than the idea of MOAS seemed less than a year ago. Catrambone did not rule out the possibility that Moas would operate elsewhere a similar migrant tragedy, after all, is occurring off Myanmar, as the Muslim Rohingya minority flees persecution.
All that will require more money. While we were out at sea, a fundraising drive by the activist organisation Avaaz reached $500,000, slightly less than a months costs. Moas will now just about cover running costs from donations this year, though the Catrambones continue to plug holes. Catrambone knows one of his problems is that, unlike many other wealthy individuals, he is at the action end of the philanthropy chain. Most set up foundations to finance political advocacy or donate to existing NGOs, many of which have large memberships. He and Regina are wary of Moas being seen as an eccentric millionaires hobby, making it harder to raise money and awareness. We are not bored, we are not old, we have a lot to do, said Regina, who has increasingly turned her attention away from their business and towards Moas. And with a large, well-organised NGO like Doctors without Borders sending its own boats this year, there is now an element of competition for raising funds. Cooperation, Catrambone says, is the future. Catrambone has also thought of seeking funding from the merchant marine industry, which loses money every time a cargo vessel or oil tanker is ordered to a rescue.
Whatever the future holds, nothing can change the fact that the Catrambones initially self-financed, freelance operators have set both a precedent and, having never lost a life, a standard. Those who care about migrants drowning, Catrambone insists, no longer have to wait for governments to act. They can turn, instead, to Moas or other NGOs. He had already told me that if the family business ever went down, he and Regina would have no regrets about spending so much time and money on Moas. A lot of people say: Oh, look at the millionaires! Theyve spent a lot of money, he said. Ive invested my life into this and my family has invested our savings. This is important for us and we believe in it. And you know what, if I am poor one day and Im out in the street, well so be it. But we did this. And we are proud of it. I will never take anything back.
