For nine har­row­ing days, Shan­non Mo­hammed and five fel­low fish­er­men drift­ed across the At­lantic Ocean in a small dinghy af­ter fire ripped through the long­line fish­ing ves­sel St Vin­cent VII, forc­ing them to aban­don ship hun­dreds of miles from land.

The men sur­vived on emer­gency ra­tion bis­cuits and care­ful­ly mea­sured sips of wa­ter sal­vaged from the burn­ing ves­sel, en­dured blis­ter­ing day­time heat, freez­ing nights, de­hy­dra­tion and hal­lu­ci­na­tions, and watched one of their crew­mates die af­ter help fi­nal­ly ar­rived.

Yet through­out the or­deal, Mo­hammed said he re­fused to sur­ren­der hope.