Rescuers Recount 'Incredible Coincidence' That Led to Finding 11-Year-Old Shipwreck Survivor After 3 Days at Sea

Mar. 15, 2025

Compass-Collective.org

A search and rescue team may have missed an 11-year-oldshipwreck survivorhad it not been for what they called an “incredible coincidence.”

“It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the child’s voice despite the engine running,” skipper Matthias Wiedenlübbert said in apress releaseon Wednesday, Dec. 11, while discussing the discovery. Wiedenlübbert works with CompassCollective, a German charitable organization that performs sea rescue missions.

Their metal boat carrying migrants had set off from Sfax, Tunisia, and sank off the coast of Lampedusa in Italy.

CompassCollective said the child was “probably the only one of the 45 people on board to survive the storm that lasted several days in the central Mediterranean.”  She had been adrift atseafor three days.

“Of course we looked for other survivors. But after the storm that lasted for days with over 23 knots and 2.5 meter high waves, it was hopeless,” the skipper added.

CompassCollective’s Katja Tempel toldThe Associated Press, “She was exhausted and tired and cold, but in general, she was fine when we fetched her out of the water.”

The girl, whose identity has not been made public, is from Sierra Leone.

“We don’t know what happened to the people,’' Tempel said. ”We assume that they all drowned, but we don’t know what.”

According to the press release, since CompassCollective began operations in August 2023, the organization has “supported a total of 1653 people in distress at sea.”

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“Even in storms, people are forced to use risky escape routes across the Mediterranean. We need safe passages for refugees and an open Europe that welcomes people and gives them easy access to the asylum system. Drowning in the Mediterranean is not an option,” Tempel said.

“In this festive period, in which the majority of us are lucky to be with our loved ones, my thoughts go out to the girl from Sierra Leone,” Nicola Dell’Arciprete, head of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF in Italy, said, perBusiness Insider Africa. “Yet another tragedy that increases the number of dead and missing in the Central Mediterranean.”

source: people.com