DUBAI // Three fishermen whose boat sank after a collision with a 300-metre container ship survived a night at sea by holding on to pieces of floating wreckage, but a fourth man died.
Their tiny boat, Zahra, was smashed to pieces when it was hit by the Maersk Georgia, pitching them into the sea where they were forced to cling to a box they had been using to hold their catch.
“I opened my eyes and saw a huge ship coming from our right, it was so close and so big that I couldn’t even scream,” said one of the crew, A?H, 23, from Pakistan.
Three of the Maersk Georgia crew are on trial at the Misdemeanours Court for causing a man’s death and injuring three others.
The Zahra crewman said that, apart from the ship’s pilot, all of the crew had been asleep at the time of the collision – at about 2.30am – and all were knocked from their boat.
“I found myself in the water right under the big ship, it bumped me in the head, I tried to swim to the surface but the water force created by the ship kept pushing me under,” he said.
When he finally surfaced he saw the Zahra in pieces and his two colleagues E?E, 45, from India, and M?H, 20, from Pakistan, hanging on to the catch box. He could not see Sini Morgesan, 45, from India, who had been piloting the boat at the time of the crash.
“Sini was not seen by any of us,” he added.
E?E said he was not woken by the collision, but only awoke when his body hit the sea. After more than seven hours of fighting to stay afloat, the three survivors were pulled from the water by another small fishing boat at nearly 10am the next day.
The coastguard were then alerted and took the men to Rashid Hospital in Dubai.
A coastguard search found Morgesan’s dead body.
The Emirati-owned Zahra had been at sea for six days fishing when the collision took place on June 16 last year.
The crew told police that it was too dark for them to notice the name of the ship that hit them, but on July 3 police identified the Maersk Georgia using video technology.
By then the ship was in Bahrain but when it returned to Jebel Ali days later its crew were arrested.
F?S, 52, the captain; G?P, 46, the sailing officer; and A?A, 63, a sailor, all from the US, were charged with causing the death of Morgesan.
The captain was not present in court to enter a plea and the other two denied the charge.
The sailing officer said he saw a flash of light coming from the fishing boat, but thought the container ship would pass them safely.
When the smaller boat came closer it swerved suddenly and hit the Maersk Georgia but when he checked for the boat he could not see what had happened to it, he said.
The captain told investigators that when the officer told him about the smaller boat he searched for the vessel using radar and found a boat about one and a half miles away.
"I asked the officer if that was the boat he was talking about and he said yes, so we continued our journey to Bahrain," said the
captain.
The case was adjourned to August 21.
salamir@thenational.ae
