Sailor Rescued After 6 Days on Raft Off Naples
NAPLES, Italy — A helicopter plucked a shivering sailor from a lifeboat he had clung to for six days after his oceanography research ship sank in a storm off western Italy, authorities reported.
The sailor and the three other people on board the Posillipo-Loran had been presumed dead after it went down off Naples in a Dec. 15 storm.
But helicopters scanning the Tyrrhenian Sea on Wednesday spotted two inflated rafts, one carrying 29-year-old Francesco Di Liello and the other containing the body of a researcher from the ship, the navy said.
Di Liello was rushed to Cardarelli Hospital in nearby Naples, where doctors said he was suffering from shock and starvation but was expected to survive, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
The sailor said the Posillipo-Loran had been battered by high waves during the storm and had sprung a leak in the hull.
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