On February 28, 1955, Luis Alejandro Velasco (along with seven other crew members of the Colombian destroyer Caldas) was reported missing. The A. R. C. (Armada Nacional de la República de Colombia) Caldas was returning from Mobile, Alabama, where it had been docked for repairs, to the port city of Cartagena in Colombia. The initial report was that the ship encountered a storm, and the men were thrown overboard. A search for the lost seamen lasted four days before they were all declared lost. However, a week later, Velasco turned up on a beach after surviving 10 days adrift in a raft without food or water.

A month after the disaster, Velasco arrived at the offices of the daily newspaper El Espectador, where he claimed he wanted to tell the true account of his survival. Gabriel García Márquez was working as a reporter and documented Velasco’s narrative.

Though most of Velasco’s story was already well-known, certain aspects had been censored by the government under the dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Velasco related how, contrary to what has been reported, the ship did not weather any storm; the accident resulted from the destroyer having been overloaded with US contraband, which caused it to severely list in the choppy seas.