WELLINGTON — The rescue of three teenagers from the remote Pacific island of Tokelau, who survived on rainwater and a seagull while adrift for 50 days at sea, was hailed Friday as a "miracle".
The boys, who had resorted to sipping seawater when the rain stopped, would not have survived much longer, said Tai Fredricsen, the first mate on the New Zealand-based tuna vessel San Nikunau which found the trio.
"It's a miracle, it's a miracle," Tanu Filo, the father of one of the boys, Filo Filo, 15, told Radio New Zealand from Tokelau after learning the boys had been found off the coast of Fiji, 1,420 kilometres (920 miles) from Tokelau.
"The whole village, the whole village, they were so excited and cried and they sang songs and hugging each other, yeah, on the road. Every people and everybody was yelling and shouting the good news."
Filo Filo, and his friends Samuel Perez, 15, and Edward Nasau, 14, went missing in a small aluminium boat in early October and were presumed to have died after unsuccessful searches by the New Zealand air force.
The 500 people on their island of Atafu held memorial services for them.
Fredricsen was at the helm of the San Nikunau when he found the teenagers on Wednesday.
"It was a miracle we got to them," he told Fairfax Media.
"I pulled the vessel up as close as I could to them and asked them if they needed any help. They said 'very much so'. They were ecstatic to see us.
"They were very skinny, but physically in good health, compared to what they have been through."
Fredricsen said the boys had a couple of coconuts on board but no water.
"Somehow they caught a bird, I don't know how, but they caught it. They ate it, that is what is recommended.
"They were having little sips of seawater, which wouldn't have been a great idea, but they had only done it for the last couple of days."
The boys had "only days to survive," he said.
The trio have been transferred to a Fiji Navy patrol boat which was due to reach port Friday afternoon, where the trio were to be taken to hospital in Suva for a check-up.
Moral of the story: The case of The Queen v Dudley and Stevens (1884) is flawed. If two little boys can survive 50 days out in the sea, Why cant the 3 able bodied seamen do the same and why do they need to resort to cannibalism? Tsk tsk
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Credit -afp
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