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

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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.''