An Up-Close Look at Refugee Rescues on the Mediterranean
In an exhausting 15-hour operation, a German boat intercepts 24 inflatable rafts carrying African migrants fleeing the Libyan coast for Italy.
ON THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA— As dawn broke, the phone rang on the bridge of the M.S. Sea-Watch 2, a 90-foot fisheries research vessel reborn as a rescue ship. It was the Italian Coast Guard calling about a boat in trouble nearby.
Within minutes Bea Schmidt, a pediatrician from Berlin, and her two-member team were chopping across the waves aboard a smaller rapid-response boat. At 6:18 a.m. they arrived to find an inflatable dinghy stuffed with refugees bound for Europe.
The craft’s starboard bow had collapsed, spilling people overboard and slowly filling the vessel with water. It was sinking.
“We will rescue you all,” Schmidt said, speaking in English.
As she began to distribute life jackets, panic set in.
