4min chapter

Uncharted with Hannah Fry cover image

16. A Drop in the Ocean

Uncharted with Hannah Fry

CHAPTER

Intro

This chapter recounts the harrowing fall of a lobsterman overboard into the frigid ocean, leaving him stranded and alone. It explores his mounting panic and desperate struggle for survival in the vast, isolating sea.

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Speaker 2
This is the BBC.
Speaker 3
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Speaker 1
BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. It's the dead of night on the 24th of July 2013. We begin many miles off the tip of Long Island on the deck of the Annamarie fishing boat. There, experienced lobsterman John Aldridge is grappling with two huge ice chests. They're obstructing his path to the bowels of the ship. He needs to access a metal hatch, but weighing 200 pounds each, the chests are firmly lodged on top. John begins to pull with all of his might at one of the chests' plastic handles. Strong as he is, he knows he'll have to give it all he's got. And then the handle snaps. John is shooting backward, tumbling across the deck towards the back of the boat. His right hand grazes a guardrail but fails to grip and he dives into a black inky sea. You're
Speaker 2
panicking and panicking and you don't know what's going on. Your mind is just doing a thousand miles an hour. The
Speaker 1
saltwater stings as it twists and turns to reach the glassy surface. John shouts as loud as he can. He's swimming, but he can't keep up with the boat. The autopilot is driving it away at seven knots and his shipmates are asleep. No one can hear him. A large wave washes over and with that, the anamary is gone. It's just him and the open ocean. It's
Speaker 2
so quiet, like you've never been around silence until you've been in the middle of the ocean. And you're looking up at the stars and the moon and the clouds and there's not a sound. And it's just the blood in your head is pumping and your thoughts.
Speaker 1
Only one thought is gripping John now.
Speaker 2
Today's the day you're gonna die.
Speaker 1
I'm Hannah Fry, a mathematician who studies patterns in human behaviour. And for BBC Radio 4, this is Uncharted, Tales of Data and Discovery. Sometime later, it's 6am on the 24th of July. Anthony Sakinski is staring at his crewmate, Mike.

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