Interview with John Jarrett

A fisherman was acclaimed as a hero yesterday after swimming for 12 hours through shark-infested seas to raise the alarm for two colleagues after their boat foundered on a reef.

The 39-year-old deckhand crawled on to a beach on the East Coast of Australia naked, covered in blood and with cuts and bruises to his arms and legs at the end of his 13km (8mile) ordeal.

Michael Williams’s effort saved the life of John Jarrett, a fellow deckhand, who was found yesterday – a further 16 hours later – clinging to a coolbox. His survival has also astonished doctors and veteran sailors.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Mr Jarrett, who suffered hypothermia and dehydration, said that his family had inspired him to hold on. He vowed never to return to the seas.

“I’ve got determination like no other person,” Mr Jarrett, who could barely speak from exhaustion, said. “I wasn’t going to die out there, no way.”

Police described Mr Williams’s swim as “an incredible act of courage”. The black belt in karate was under sedation and in a stable condition in hospital. Rescue parties continue the search for Charlie Picton, the 40-year-old captain of the prawn trawler Sea Rogue, which sank within two minutes after its netting caught on the reef at about 4am.

Mark McMurtrie, a friend of Mr Jarrett, described the ordeal that the father of three and Mr Picton had endured by kicking, paddling and clinging to the upturned coolbox.

“Every time the Esky got a bit too much water in it, he’d have to sort of hold Charlie up in one hand and hold the Esky up out of the water with the other and then put it back down so it was full of air again,” Mr McMurtrie said.

It is unclear how they separated but Mr Picton, who is understood to have been recovering from cancer, reportedly drifted away when he became too weak to hold on.

Rescue aircraft initially passed over Mr Jarrett, who endured several more hours before he was spotted in an operation comprising ten helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

The fishermen had been asleep in the cabin of their 60ft vessel and escaped through a window as it was pulled under off Byron Bay, 140km south of Brisbane. Mr Williams set off knowing that there had been no time to send a distress call and that no one would know that the fishermen were missing for a further two days.

Chris Gort, a resident near Byron Bay, was walking his dog when he came across a woman helping Mr Williams, who “looked like he had been shipwrecked”.

“There was blood all over the sand and on his legs,” he said. “He was exhausted but he was smiling and he was just glad to be alive.”

Roger Hickman, a veteran seaman, who has sailed in 31 gruelling Sydney-Hobart yacht races, said that the men’s survival defied all the rules. “Twenty-four degrees water temperature is warm enough to give you a fighting chance. But forgetting all that, we teach that you must keep your clothes on,” he said. “To survive that long is just unbelievable.”

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