‘Melody’ rescues lovesick sailor

TERRY HUTSON
THERE WAS drama aplenty for nearly a thousand passengers on the cruise ship MSC Melody as she headed for Durban to start a season of summer cruises recently. She was off the northern Mozambique coast when the signal ‘Man Overboard’ was heard. A 21-year old Filipino crew member, upset when his girlfriend (also a member of the crew) called off their relationship, threw himself overboard into the dark, but fortunately warm, Indian Ocean. Once in the water he must have had a change of heart, treading water for the next six or so hours, unaware that the ship had turned and was coming back for him. Meanwhile the ship’s master, Captain Antonio Siviero, in an excellent example of seamanship, turned the Melody and retraced his former path to where the crewman was thought to have gone overboard. From this point a methodical search pattern was begun that culminated in the discovery, soon after dawn, of the missing seaman floating in the sea. A boat was launched to recover him from the ocean, but not before one or two passengers had lodged complaints about the delay the operation was causing to their anticipated arrival in Durban. Fortunately at times like this seafarers put lives ahead of other considerations and this aspect was commemorated later in December when the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) in Durban awarded the ship and its master a mounted certificate acknowledging the excellent seamanship involved. ‘We do this exercise regularly with our 10m boat, but turning a 35 000-ton ship and coming back to the exact position where the man was thought to have jumped was something quite different and an example of outstanding seamanship of the highest order,” said Ian Wienburg of the NSRI. The certificate reads: ‘Captain Siviero’s actions and those of his crew that night were in the best traditions of the fellowship of those who go down to the sea in ships.’