Nigeria men stowed away in a ship arrived in the

The Spanish coastguard has rescued three men who stowed away on a tanker that arrived in the Canary Islands from Nigeria by balancing on its rudder just above the waterline.

In a photograph distributed on Twitter by the coastguard on Monday, the three stowaways are 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 men were taken into the port and attended to by health services for dehydration and hypothermia, the coastguard said on Twitter.

Txema Santana, a journalist and migration adviser to the Canary Islands government, tweeted: “It is not the first and it will not be the last. Stowaways do not always have the same luck.”