In a photograph distributed on Twitter by the coastguard on Monday, the three stowaways were shown perched on the rudder of the oil and chemical tanker Alithini II.
The Maltese-flagged Alithini II arrived in Las Palmas in Gran Canaria on Monday afternoon after an 11-day voyage from Lagos in Nigeria, according to Marine Traffic, a ship-tracking website, The Guardian reports.
The men were taken into the port and attended to by health services for dehydration and hypothermia, the coastguard said on Twitter.
A journalist and migration adviser to the Canary Islands government, Txema Santana, tweeted, “It is not the first and it will not be the last. Stowaways do not always have the same luck.”
The Guardian reported that perilous crossings to the Canaries from North Africa had increased dramatically since late 2019 after checks on Mediterranean routes were tightened.
In October 2020, four people stowed away on the rudder of an oil tanker from Lagos, hiding for 10 days before they were discovered by police as the vessel came into Las Palmas.
The report added that Spanish data showed migration by sea to the archipelago jumped 51% in the first five months of the year compared with a year earlier, noting thousands of people died each year on the voyage, which was increasingly perilous by the use of rickety wooden or inflatable boats.
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