A man has claimed he survived a staggering 438 days adrift at sea, but after finally coming ashore was hit by cannibalism accusations.
Jose Salvador Alvarenga was 35 when he embarked on a shark-fishing expedition from Mexico in December 2012, but his 24-foot fibre-glass boat’s motor failed, leaving him and his 22-year-old companion Ezekiel Cordoba stranded in the Pacific Ocean.
Alvarenga became a global sensation when he was found washed up, dazed and emaciated on Ebon Atoll in the Marshall Islands, a remote archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in January 2014.
READ MORE: Real-life castaway lost at sea for two weeks tells fisherman how he survived on raft
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(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
This was 438-days after he and Cordoba had set off on what was meant to be a two-day fishing trip from his home in the Mexican fishing village of Costa Azul on November 17, 2012.
They were caught in a vicious storm while preparing to return to port the next morning. The magnitude of his survival baffled many, leading to a psychological examination and lie-detector test by a US law firm in April 2014.
“We have listened to Mr Alvarenga’s story and we concluded that, in addition to being epic, it is 100% real,” said Jeffrey Masonek, head of the Masonek Law Offices, in 2014 A bidding war soon ensued between publishers for the rights to Alvarenga’s memoir.
(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
Alvarenga claimed he managed to avoid death by catching birds, fish and turtles, and drinking turtle blood and his own urine when there was no rainwater.
He said: “I thank God and I thank the birds I caught to eat. I caught fish and at times I drank my own urine to have liquid.
“Every day was the same, just the sea, the sea. I saw nothing more. The sea and my boat. I had no idea of time, but I know that it was December 21, 2012, when we left.
“The days at sea and the nights…they were all one after a while. I lived on fish that were easy to catch and once I caught a small shark. I know sharks. I used to catch them all the time.”
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
When Alvarenga first came ashore, he met Cordoba’s mother Ana Rosa Diaz in a poignant encounter between the two, filled with tears and embraces. But the bond between Alvarenga and his deceased shipmate’s kin has severely deteriorated since 18 months prior.
Cordoba’s family was sceptical of Alvarenga’s tall tale and in 2015 demanded a million dollars in compensation, claiming that their beloved Ezequiel was the victim of cannibalism at the hands of his fellow castaway.
Alvarenga’s lawyer has always firmly denied these claims.
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