## The Twenty Ships That Didn’t Stop
Among the elements of Alvarenga’s account that received significant attention in the initial reports, the claim that approximately twenty container ships had passed him without stopping or responding was one of the most striking.
This detail is not implausible in the context of how large commercial vessels operate in the open ocean. A 25-foot open boat, low in the water, would be difficult to spot from the bridge of a container ship, particularly at any distance. Ships traveling at commercial speed cover considerable distance quickly, and the watch conditions on many commercial vessels — especially in the middle of the Pacific, far from the shipping channels where collision risk is higher — are not necessarily intensive. A small object on the water that doesn’t register on radar as a vessel of significance might not be investigated.
Alvarenga described each sighting as a cycle of intense hope and intense despair. He would see a ship on the horizon, experience the surge of energy that hope generates, spend hours waving and trying to signal, and then watch the ship continue on its course. The repeated experience of this cycle — hope, effort, disappointment — across twenty instances over more than a year is a specific kind of psychological burden, arguably harder in some respects than simply being alone without any such near-misses, because each near-miss renewed the hope and then crushed it.
He did not maintain a written log. He could not document the ships. The claim that approximately twenty ships passed without responding is his account and cannot be independently verified. It is reported here as his account, attributed appropriately.