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27265: Hermantin(news)Survivor of freighter wreck recounts his side of the story (fwd)





Leonie Hermantin

Posted on Sun, Jan. 15, 2006


ESPERANCIA SURVIVOR
Survivor of freighter wreck recounts his side of the story
Yves Michel lived to tell about the sinking of the Esperancia 24 years ago. Now, he sets the record straight on how many died and why it sank.
BY LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com

All was not lost in the 1982 wreck of the Esperancia. Yves Michel survived -- one of six men who did.

Michel, then 21, said he spent two and a half harrowing days floating in the ocean after the freighter broke apart early Saturday, March 27, 1982.

Michel was on deck, his saving grace. ``I think many others were hiding below and sank with the freighter.''

Located by a Miami Herald reporter in Virginia, Michel, now 45, gives an account of the wreck that differs from the official history of the ill-fated crossing: He said the death toll was much higher than the 21 bodies recovered. The Esperancia carried many more.

''The boat was packed; there were about 100 people on board,'' said Michel, who knew some of them from his neighborhood in Haiti.

The Haitian passengers had made their way to Nassau and paid to be smuggled the rest of the way to Florida on the cargo freighter.

Michel said the Esperancia aroused the suspicion of the U.S. Coast Guard, which boarded it hours before it sank, but its human cargo was not detected.

About 12 hours and miles away from South Florida, the Esperancia gave under its load. ''The weather was fine, and we were moving along,'' Michel said. He still remembers being thrown about, then waking up in the water.

Michel broke into a survival routine. ''I would swim a little, and then I would float a little.'' Hours passed, then days.

Suddenly, he saw city lights, swam toward them and made it to Hillsboro Beach. Authorities later found five other men wandering on Highland Beach, some half-dead from exhaustion. Everyone else died.

Rounded up along with the other survivors, Michel spent several months at the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade. He was eventually released. He went to work, fine-tuned his English and married. His early jobs were as a kitchen helper; today, he proudly says he is a kitchen manager.

He recently divorced and moved to Virginia from North Miami, where his two daughters and son still live with his ex-wife.

But he has seldom spoken of his deadly crossing with his children.

''Why?'' he asked. ``It was a terrible, terrible thing.''