Two friends’ fishing trip ended in disaster — and only one of them made it back to shore.
Jose Salvador Alvarenga and Ezequiel Cordoba embarked on what was supposed to be a two-day trip back in November 2012, but little did they know they’d end up being out at sea for much, much longer than they had planned for.
Alvarenga and Cordoba’s trip ended up going on for 15 months after a violent storm knocked them off their intended course. The storm also ruined their communications systems meaning they were unable to call for help when they needed it most.
Reportedly, the last thing said on their radio was Alvarenga telling the owner of the 25-foot boat: “Come now, I am really getting f****d out here.”
Tragically, Alvarenga was the only one who survived the 400+ days at sea, and 22-year-old Cordoba died several months into their drastically prolonged trip.
The pair had survived for some time by eating birds and fish, but Cordoba fell unwell after allegedly eating a bird that had a poisonous snake in its stomach.
Before his death, Alveranga promised his friend that he wouldn’t eat his body. Instead, he says he kept his friend’s dead body with him for six days before deciding to throw the corpse into the sea.
Ultimately, Alveranga washed up in the Marshall Islands, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in January 2014.
While Alveranga always denied eating Cordoba, the young man’s grieving family believed he did, in fact, eat him, and proceeded to sue Alveranga for $1,000,000 for alleged cannibalism.
Alvarenga pictured just three months after making it back to shore (JOSE CABEZAS/AFP via Getty Images)
Benedicto Perlera, Alvarenga’s lawyer in 2014, said that his client believed Cordoba may have died in the month of March.
“In the middle of the ocean he had no way of knowing the day, and did not have a calendar, but he believes it was around March and so that is how we shall remember him,” Perlera said, as per The Telegraph.
As well as the large sum of money, the Cordoba family demanded 50 percent of the proceeds of Alvarenga’s book, called 438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea, which was published in October 2015.
The reason for this filing was that the family of the deceased belied they should be entitled to a share of royalties made from the book, as they claimed that if their relative were alive, he and Alvarenga’s story would be worth a great deal of money. Despite this, the Telegraph reported at the time that the book earnings were not as high as the family claimed.
The $1,000,000 suit from the Cordobas wasn’t the only filing Alveranga had to face; his lawyer Perlera went on to sue him for $1,000,000 as well, because his client signed a book deal and switched law firms.
