Crew bail out from sinking ship

THE SEVEN crew members of a Cambodian-flagged ship safely abandoned the vessel when it started listing off the Paphos coast yesterday with a cargo of copper.

The Lynn was carrying some 650 tonnes of copper sheets and was headed from Limassol to Corinth, Greece, when it issued a distress signal 20 km west of the island yesterday morning.

The coastguard picked up the five Ukrainians and two Greeks who abandoned the vessel in a lifeboat, drifting some 300 metres away from the ship.

The Lynn’s captain said that they were forced to jump ship after the engine room flooded. “After an agonising two hours on the lifeboat, we were picked up by the Paphos coastguard, whom I would really want to thank,” the somewhat shaken captain said.

The ship’s engineer was taken to hospital for treatment as a precaution. The other crew members were unharmed.

The Department of Merchant Shipping said it was investigating the cause of the accident. According to an official at the department, the vessel had taken a left tilt in rough seas.

The ship later sank.

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