ALONE, desperate and helpless Benedict Jor sits on his upturned boat as a rescue ship draws near to rescue him after he drifted for three weeks.
The 20-year-old castaway from East New Britain had survived at first on coconuts and bananas before his tiny craft flipped over and he had to crawl on to the hull.
And there for the next two weeks he sat, hoping for rescue, turning his face to the occasional rain squall for water and eating raw fish he had managed to catch with the line he had held on to.
St Andrew Strait, just south of Manus island, was where Jor was stranded.
It was by sheer luck that he was spotted by an Australian container ship as he drifted in the St Andrew Strait off Papua New Guinea, north of the Australian continent.
The Mail Online reported yesterday that the crew of the ship Wangaratta, travelling from China to Melbourne, hauled him on board, where he burst into tears of relief.
“Thank you, thank you, I thought I was going to die,” he said in his broken English.
PNG officials have now sent a cheerful message to his family in his small village of Nonga, near Rabaul, who had feared the worst as the weeks went by without any sign of him.
Fishermen from Papua New Guinea frequently run into trouble when they put out to sea in flimsy wooden boats powered by worn-out motors.
Jor had set out from his village to fish for tuna, but a change in wind and currents swept his boat out to sea and after several days drifting the craft flipped over in choppy seas.
“Several boats passed by but they did not see me,” Jor told his rescuers.
Jor was treated in the ship’s hospital for hypothermia, dehydration and shock and it is now planned that the vessel will take him from Melbourne to Sydney, where he will pass through immigration and where consular officials will arrange for him to be flown home.
Source : National News 09/09/10 http://www.thenational.com.pg/?q=node/12441
