Eight Crew Members Dead in Falklands Shipwreck

AFP

London: Eight crew members have died and five are missing after their fishing vessel encountered bad weather near the Falkland Islands, Spanish authorities said late Tuesday.

Rescuers recovered eight dead bodies along with 14 survivors, according to national authorities in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia, which cited Falklands maritime authorities.

Five people were still missing, they said. 

The crew members abandoned the Argos Georgia vessel due to “uncontrolled flooding” shortly after 4:00 pm local time (1900 GMT) Monday and took to life rafts, the Falkland Islands government said.

A British forces vessel and two fishing boats “have been able to rescue a number of the crew members,” the government of the British overseas territory said earlier Tuesday. 

The vessel was roughly 200 nautical miles east of the Falkland Islands capital Stanley at the time, it said. Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said 10 of those aboard the vessel were Spanish.

Two British Royal Air Force planes had been tracking and reporting the position of the life rafts while several maritime vessels took part in the search operations, the earlier Falklands statement read. 

A search and rescue helicopter that initially attempted to rescue some of the stricken crew members from the scene late Monday had failed amid “extremely challenging weather conditions and very limited time on scene due to range.”

Robert Ervik, the owner of the Argos Georgia, confirmed to AFP that 27 people were aboard the boat — which flies the flag of Saint Helena, another British overseas territory in the South Atlantic — when it began to take on water Monday.

The boat, built in 2018 in Turkey, is nearly 54 meters (177 feet) long and can accommodate 28 people, according to its British-Norwegian fishing firm owners, Argos Froyanes.