Mystery of castaway rescued from raft
Published: April 23, 2006
SWEDISH police were last night questioning a “castaway” discovered adrift on a tiny raft made of oil drums between Denmark and Norway after apparently spending four days at sea.
The 46-year-old man, who said his name was George Williams, was picked up by a Norwegian gas tanker yesterday in the international waters of the Skagerrak.
He was found clinging to his raft made from four oil barrels lashed to some planks. But he has refused to reveal how he became adrift in the freezing waters.
Last night, he was being treated for frostbite to one of his feet at a hospital in Gothenburg, before being questioned again.
The man, who speaks English, said he was born in South Africa in 1959, lived in America, but did not have US citizenship. He said he had been working in Europe for a number of years and wanted to go to New York to contact some people.
A spokesman for Gothenburg police said the man did not have any identification or passport. “He won’t tell us how he ended up on the raft,” the spokesman said. “He is very polite but confusing. It is unlikely he would have survived another night.”
Earlier reports said the man told rescuers he had been set adrift from a UK ship. He was spotted by the crew of the Berge Odin, sailing from Scotland to Sweden, at around 8:20am.
Wearing light clothing and suffering from cold and exhaustion, he was treated by the crew, who proceeded to Gothenburg where he was passed to Swedish authorities by boat at around 4pm.
A spokesman for the Rescue Co-ordination Centre for Southern Norway said: “You hear these Robinson Crusoe stories from other parts of the world, but not very often here in the far north.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: