What was going through the mariners\u2019 minds, embarking on a voyage they must have feared they would not survive? How did they bid farewell to their loved ones before setting off? What had driven them to accept such a mission? The answers to those questions, like the identities of the sailors, remain a mystery to Brazilian police.<\/p>\n
What investigators are certain of is the purpose of the vessel: a dungeon-like \u201cnarco-submarine\u201d that they say was days away from starting a hellish three-week odyssey across the Atlantic carrying hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of cocaine to Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could pay me as much money as you liked and I confess I wouldn\u2019t go \u2026 on such an insane journey,\u201d said Fernando Casarin, the federal police chief whose special forces recently captured the narco-sub on the eve of its departure from the Amazon.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou ask yourself if [for these sailors] it\u2019s a question of great courage or a total lack of awareness of what they\u2019re getting into,\u201d added Casarin, who is responsible for the vast state of Par\u00e1 where the sub was found in May in a secret dockyard on the island of Maraj\u00f3.<\/p>\n
A semi-submersible narco-submarine seized by Brazilian forces on Maraj\u00f3, displayed at a navy base in Bel\u00e9m, August 2025. Photograph: Alessandro Falco\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Colombian drug lords first started using narco-subs \u2013 in reality handmade semi-submersibles that travel just under the surface of the water with only their cockpit sticking out \u2013 to smuggle cocaine through the Caribbean towards Mexico and the US in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
More recently, crime bosses have become far more ambitious, commissioning fibreglass creations to ship huge hauls of cocaine thousands of miles to the coasts of Portugal and Spain.<\/p>\n
Casarin said the eye-watering profits involved in cocaine trafficking explained why South American criminals continue to use subs, despite the risks.<\/p>\n
Journalist Tom Phillips enters the confiscated \u2018narco-submarine\u2019. Photograph: Alessandro Falco\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
A kilo of cocaine could be bought for $1,000-$2,000 (\u00a3740-\u00a31,480) on Brazil\u2019s border with Colombia, the world\u2019s top cocaine producer. In Europe, where consumption is soaring, the same amount could be sold for about $60,000. A sub that successfully smuggled 5 or 6 tonnes of the drug to Europe could net its owners $200m-$250m. \u201cThe profits are astronomical,\u201d Casarin said.<\/p>\n
Javier Romero, a Spanish journalist who is one of the leading chroniclers of the narco-sub industry, suspected South American kingpins had inaugurated the subaquatic trafficking route in the late 90s.<\/p>\n
US Coast Guard officers intercept a submarine smuggling cocaine in the eastern Pacific in 2019. Photograph: Us Coast Guard Handout\/EPA<\/p>\n
But police only confirmed the route\u2019s existence in 2019 when the first such contraption<\/a> was apprehended off the Iberian peninsula after its three occupants endured a 27-day nightmare from their starting point in the Brazilian Amazon.<\/p>\n Romero, who works for the newspaper La Voz de Galicia<\/a>, believed the phenomenon has intensified dramatically in recent months, with \u201can uptick in activity\u201d over the summer when the number of narco-sub alerts received by Spanish police rose from one every three months to more than five per month.<\/p>\n In mid-September, Spanish police seized 3,500kg of cocaine<\/a> that had been delivered to the Galician coastline and arrested three Colombian suspects \u2013 although their narco-sub was nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n Three months after the Brazilian narco-sub was captured on Maraj\u00f3, the Guardian was given access to the 60ft vessel. Even on dry land, clambering into its cramped control room through a small hatch is a chilling and claustrophobic experience.<\/p>\n Two narrow wooden bunk-beds, on either side of the wheelhouse, offer the only resting space. A plastic windscreen would have been the sailors\u2019 only window to the world as they forged ahead through the waves towards Europe at about 16km\/h.<\/p>\n Osvaldo Scalezi, who runs the federal police\u2019s anti-drug division, said that while most people assumed drowning was the greatest risk of travelling in a narco-sub, he believed it was suffocation. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a very high-powered engine in there \u2026 and the exhaust pipes are really crudely made. There\u2019s nothing to stop the combustion gases leaking into the vessel and asphyxiating them all to death,\u201d Scalezi said.<\/p>\n A view from inside the cockpit of the seized \u2018narco-submarine\u2019 in Bel\u00e9m showing the compass and the small windows used for navigation just above the waterline. Photograph: Alessandro Falco\/The Guardian<\/p>\n In the vessel\u2019s wooden bow, where the drugs would have been stored, sat the only creature comforts its crew would have enjoyed during their 6,000km transatlantic voyage. A 700-litre tank for drinking water, a freezer and a portable air-conditioning unit to cool the sweltering greenhouse-like machine.<\/p>\n As he stared up at the wood and fibreglass hulk, Casarin compared the crew\u2019s death-defying expedition to that of the American astronauts who made the first lunar landing in 1969. \u201cIt\u2019s on that level,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a crazy, pirate\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n The nameless blue boat was discovered two months after an almost identical semisubmersible was caught<\/a> near the Azores, during a joint operation in March involving Portuguese, Spanish, US and UK authorities. As well as 6 tonnes of cocaine, the vessel carried five men, three of whom were Brazilian from the Par\u00e1 region.<\/p>\n For Casarin, the arrest of those three Brazilians reinforced the idea that Par\u00e1 and the neighbouring state of Amap\u00e1 were becoming \u201ca hub for the construction of these sorts of vessels\u201d.<\/p>\n Romero said the region\u2019s remote jungles and mangroves were the ideal place to conceal \u201cclandestine shipyards\u201d that produced narco-subs. But it is far from the only location where such vessels are being built in South America \u2013 and Europe is no longer their most distant destination.<\/p>\n A refrigerator and air conditioner onboard the narco-sub. Photograph: Alessandro Falco\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Henry Shuldiner, a researcher from Insight Crime who wrote a recent report<\/a> on narco-subs, recalled how in late 2024 Colombian police intercepted a semisubmersible<\/a> as it crossed the Pacific towards Australia and New Zealand, a journey that takes at least double the time it takes to get to Europe.<\/p>\n In January a scuttled narco-sub turned up<\/a> on Sierra Leone\u2019s coast, strengthening Shuldiner\u2019s belief that the narco-sub industry was going global<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite the billions being made, little of that money finds its way to the mariners who steer the narco-subs across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n Casarin believed Brazilian seamen earned just 30,000-50,000 reais (\u00a34,000-\u00a37,000) for such a trip. Romero, the author of a book about narco-subs called Operation Black Tide, said the Ecuadorian sailors on the first vessel seized in Europe had been offered about $15,000.<\/p>\n \u201cNarcotrafficking is an industry of exploitation, it always has been,\u201d said the journalist, who calls the rickety vessels \u201cpropeller-driven coffins\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cJust imagine spending hours, or days, stuck inside one of these things,\u201d Romero said. \u201cIt is total madness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What was going through the mariners\u2019 minds, embarking on a voyage they must have feared they would not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-438546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115236687563908114","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}