“Newfoundland is hell, if you fall into the water you survive 3 or 4 minutes”

Early in the morning of February 15, the Newfoundland sea was rough. The crew of the Villa de Pitanxo had informed their families that the weather was bad. A few hours later, the waves engulfed the 50-meter length of that fishing boat whose whereabouts are still unknown. And with her, 12 crew members who are still missing.

Carlos Antonio Andrino de Almeida (San Jacinto de Aveiro, 1942) does not hesitate to affirm that «Terranova is hell». He was a ship captain and a good part of his work was carried out in the fishing banks that surround this Canadian island, where he directed the rescue of the crews of two ships. “In sub-zero water you can barely survive 3 or 4 minutes,” certifies a sailor who has spent almost as much time at sea as in Badajoz, the city where he lives.

– Where are its origins?

–I have always lived in Badajoz but I was born in San Jacinto de Aveiro, south of Porto, where my father was manager of some important shipyards in which there was a German partner who sent him to Badajoz to direct Metalúrgica Extremeña. Over the years he stayed with Imebasa Industrial Metalúrgica de Badajoz, which was in Valdepasillas.

– What do you remember about your childhood?

–Holiday seasons on the San Jacinto isthmus. On one side was the estuary and on the other, the sea. I bathed there as a child, in full freedom. I went to the shipyards, to the inaugurations of the boats… That’s where my love for sailing was born.

When did you decide that you would be a navy captain?

–I studied at the Maristas, but when I finished 6th and Revalidated, my father told me to choose between Madrid and Lisbon. I told him I wanted to go to Lisbon, to join the Navy. The first months I was in the naval school, which was military; then I went to the Infante Don Enrique Nautical School. But right after I finished, they recruited me because Portugal was fighting in the colonies. For four years I did a compulsory military service in the cavalry. Fortunately I ended up in the Elvas barracks, I didn’t have to go to war.

–When did you first join a crew?

-I got married on February 1, 1969 and on February 18 I embarked on a 340-meter-long oil tanker as a pilot trainee, which is how you start, but I ended up as a third officer. He was fine, but he wanted to get on a fishing boat. My first fishing boat was the Santo Andres.

– Were they like the current ones?

-The usual thing was line fishing, which consisted of anchoring the boat in a place from which small boats left to fish for cod. Later came the side trawlers, which released the net on one side, and finally the rear trawlers.

–What was Santo Andrés like?

-60 people could go, more or less it could be the same as Villa de Pitanxo. We carried barrels with brine to preserve the food with which we ate. And the processing of the cod was done on the boat itself: they opened the cod, removed its guts and covered it with salt. It was the way to keep it.

What is the role of the captain?

–Check that everything is going well, provide security so as not to pass too close to other ships and, above all, find abundant schools of fish.

–Is it complicated in Newfoundland?

-In that area there are two difficult times: winter and summer. Until February there are continuous storms, so in winter the boats in line did not go out.

–What is the danger of summer?

-The fog, sometimes five months are chained in which you don’t see a single ship. When I started to navigate, the radar allowed us to control the situation and we could also call by radio. There was a summer in which I could count 87 boats around me without seeing any through the fog.

– Did you experience any extreme situation?

–Once we had to turn the engine all the way back to avoid colliding with a ship. I even saw a sailor raising his hands to indicate that we should stop. The problem is that we spotted it when we were on it.

– Have the navigation systems improved?

-When I started there was no GPS and the warnings came through the radiotelegraph officer, like in the Titanic movies. When they gave us a cyclone or hurricane warning, we tried to get away. Later the faximil arrived, which allowed printing a map with the drawings of the storms.

“Has a ship sunk before your eyes?”

I have saved the crew of two ships. One in the Virgin Rocks that went down in a fire. The entire crew arrived in the launches at our ship.

-And the other?

-My company had many ships, but there were three that were triplets: the Santa Isabel, the Santa Cristina and the Santa Mafalda, which was the one I was on. The Santa Isabel had a very forward-looking captain, and one stormy night she decided to drop her gear to fish. Suddenly she saw a huge ice sheet approaching her. She gave the order to turn all the way to port, but in the turn she collided with the plate and her hull split open like a can of sardines. The luck is that we were 100 meters away. If not, they would all have died.

– Do you think it is possible to locate the bodies of the Villa de Pitanxo?

–It is possible, but I think they will be at the bottom. Those who have been rescued or found dead must be those who were on deck, but those who were below surely went to the bottom with the ship.

– Do you suffer with these tragedies?

-These days I have lived them with great intensity, because it is an area that I know. Even my wife has told me that she never imagined that working on a fishing boat would be so complicated.

“Did you never tell your wife about the dangers a sailor runs?”

–I think she realized the hardness of my work when she asked me to get on my ship in South Africa. It must have been in 1977, she presented herself in Cape Town and had to disembark three days later to enter the hospital. She had lost 14 kilos with dizziness!

Do you miss your profession?

-Sometimes I miss her, but when I retired at 55 and someone asked me, I always told them that my job was a high-risk profession. There were people who did not understand it, they believed that my thing was a vacation at sea. Sailors say that being on board is like living in a prison, with the difference that you can die by drowning

“Did you ever think about quitting?”

-The first time I got on a boat there was a breakdown and it took us eight months to get back. But when the salaries were 10,000 pesetas and you brought back 25,000, you thought it was worth embarking again.