The fisherman had been missing for 14 months (Picture: Getty) As José Salvador Alvarenga stepped gingerly from a patrol boat onto the dock in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, he looked nothing like the fisherman who had disappeared 14 months earlier. His hair hung in wild tangles, a thick beard obscured his face, and although he could stand, Salvador walked with the slow, cautious steps of someone much older than his 36 years. Fourteen months adrift in a tiny fishing boat had ravaged his body. He was weak, riddled with parasites, likely contracted from eating raw birds and drinking turtle blood, and his malnourished body had swollen with fluid retention.  A nurse stayed close by Salvador, as he made his way onto dry land for the first time in 438 days. Behind him was Tom Armbruster, then the US Ambassador in the Marshall Islands, who was one of the first people to speak to him after his horrific ordeal. José was washed up on Ebon Atoll on January 30, 2014 (Picture: Hilary Hosia/AFP via Getty Images) ‘He looked like somebody who had been out in the wild for quite a long time’, Tom, now an international consultant, tells Metro over Zoom from his home in Ithaca, New York State. ‘He moved with difficulty and seemed to be swollen. He was certainly not emaciated.’ That was because Salvador found a number of ingenious ways to survive at sea in the elements after he was cast adrift in 2012. The fisherman became the first person in recorded history to survive more than a year adrift in a small boat. After setting sail from Costa Azul, Mexico, on what should have been a routine two-day shark fishing trip in November 2012, he drifted across the Pacific for 438 days. After his GPS broke and the motor failed during a five-day storm, Salvador and apprentice fisherman, 22-year-old Ezequiel Córdoba, were pulled out to sea and there was nothing left to do but survive. The small boat that José drifted 8,000-miles across the Pacific in (Picture: STR/AFP via Getty Images) ‘It was almost like a glorified row boat. 25 feet long – a very simple craft that you would have offshore. It is not an ocean going vessel by any stretch of the imagination. It was very basic,’ Tom explains. There was no cabin or roof, just a fibreglass crate the size of a fridge designed to hold Salvador’s catch. It was to become his only shelter for more than a year. After the storm passed, Salvador and Ezequiel were more than 250 miles offshore and beyond help from the coastguard. The pair, who had initially been freezing and soaked, clinging to each other for warmth beneath the upturned ice box, were now scorched and parched under the central American sun. ‘I was so hungry that I was eating my own fingernails, swallowing all the little pieces,’ Salvador told journalist Jonathan Franklin, who wrote the book 438 Days about the ordeal. José’s malnourished body had swollen with fluid retention, and had been left weak and riddled with parasites, likely contracted from eating raw birds and drinking turtle blood (Picture: Rene Quintanilla/AFP via Getty Images) He scooped jellyfish from the sea with his bare hands and swallowed them whole. He even fantasised about eating the little finger on his left hand, deciding it was the least valuable. He and Ezequiel drank their own urine and licked the inside of the boat in desperate search for previously undiscovered droplets of water. Occasionally, a rubbish bag would float by and the men would dissect what was inside, once discovering a piece of already-chewed gum, which they shared. Later, Salvador chewed a wooden plank until it became pulp and tried to eat that. ‘He told us about how he captured turtles and fish, and how he would lure birds on board the boat, and then snare them,’ Tom, who had been tasked with translating Salvador’s ordeal ahead of meeting the Marshallese authorities, explains. ‘He would drink the birds’ blood and and keep them until he needed them.’ Salvador, desperate to survive, told Ezequiel they should make any meal they found a ritual, and the pair shared their slim pickings of dried fish and sea turtles. Salvador would divide the meat and blood, but the younger fisherman could not. ‘Ezequiel simply couldn’t drink the blood. He just couldn’t get his body to do it, and he wasted away,’ Tom says. One morning, four months after they had left, the young apprentice told Salvador he was dying. A few hours later, Ezequiel was gone. ‘You could tell that this was something Salvador wrestled with, and I’m sure he plays it over and over in his mind. This was somebody who went through incredible trauma and survived it,’ adds Tom. Roselia Diaz with a picture of her son, Ezequiel, who died on the boat (Picture: Elizabeth Ruiz/AFP via Getty Images) After Ezequiel died, Salvador propped him up and talked to him for days. When the young man’s skin turned leathery, he took his clothes, washed his feet, sent him overboard and passed out. When Salvador came round with a bump on his head, he crawled under the ice box and started to cry. The following months passed in a cycle of hunting, desperation and hallucinations. ’At one point a container ship went by so close that he could see the faces of the men on board, and he was waving and trying to get their attention. They passed him by – and you could just see the heartbreak in his face. It was really a crushing moment for him. ‘He talked about considering suicide and and even offering himself to the sharks. There were some very dark days for him, but as a fisherman, he just continued day by day,’ Tom remembers. Tom Armbruster was one of the first people to speak to José after his horrific ordeal (Picture: Supplied) Salvador found ways to cope, talking to the birds, throwing carcasses into the water to check for sharks before taking a swim, and finding comfort wherever he could. He made a pillow out of seaweed until he discovered it was alive with creatures and a crab had tried to make a home in his ear. After 14 months, when the fisherman finally spotted land, he assumed it was another hallucination and went to sleep. He had in fact seen the remote atolls of the Marshall Islands, more than 9,000 miles from Costa Azul. When he awoke, Salvador rowed for hours towards land, swimming the final stretch and crawling onto the sand in shocked disbelief. On Ebon, he found the home of locals Emi Libokmeto and Russel Laikidrik who took him in and fed him coconut water and pancakes. ‘They’re very generous in the Marshall Islands and welcoming. At first they thought he was like a drunk American tourist or something, and they were a little scared of him,’ Tom explains. José hugging his daughter after being reuinted with his family at his home in Garita Palmera (Picture: José Cabezas/AFP via Getty Images) José’s story was initially met with some scepticism (Picture: Roberto Escobar/EPA/Shutterstock) As Salvador ravenously ate his first home-cooked food in over a year, he tried to explain what had happened, though they spoke no Spanish. It was only when Tom and his deputy Norman Barth met him on the boat to the mainland that his remarkable story started to come out. ‘We went on board the ship, talked to him and listened to his story, and I think our job was really just to answer some of the questions that the authorities had. Is this for real? ‘And we were pretty quickly convinced that yes, this was a fisherman who’d been gone a long, long time. He was in shock, but he was coherent. He was a quiet guy, but he had a lot of character.’ The world’s press was sceptical – how could a man survive at sea for so long? But Tom has no doubts. ‘There is just no other real explanation. How can somebody be gone for that long and wind up 9,000 miles away from their home, in a remote Marshallese island? The castaway fisherman has kept out of the spotlight since his traumatic ordeal (Picture: Roberto Escobar/EPA/Shutterstock) ‘From speaking to him you could tell there were times when he was very close to breaking down completely. He had some real moments of despair and some real depths along that journey when it was hard for him to go on.’ When he returned to dry land, Salvador did indeed struggle. He couldn’t be anywhere near water for a while, and after his initial joy at being reunited with his daughter, he went quiet, needing constant company but not wanting to talk, and waking with nightmares. He later worked on his account with Jonathan Franklin in a bid to help people experiencing depression and suicidal ideation. He told him: ‘I suffered so much and for so long. Maybe if people read this they will realise that if I can make it, they can make it. Many people suffer only because of what happens in their head; I was physically being tortured. I had no food. No water. If I can make it so can you.’ Following the release of the book, the family of Salvador’s deceased crewmate filed a $1million lawsuit, citing cannibalism and defamation. They were convinced that the fisherman had eaten Ezequiel – however the claim was eventually dropped after experts found no sign of foulplay and Salvador passed a lie detector test. Since then, the castaway has kept out of the spotlight. Tom doesn’t know what he’s doing now. ‘He’s just trying to keep a low profile. Probably living back in El Salvador or making a living in Mexico, being with his family. ‘It was amazing to meet him. I’ve had the opportunity to have to play a role in presidential visits, but meeting him as he came into Majuro, was an incredible moment – one where you know you’re seeing something really special. ‘He is one of the world’s greatest survivors. An extraordinarily resourceful man with immense character. I came away thinking I’d just witnessed one of the greatest survival stories ever.’   Jonathan Franklin is author of Red Road Green.