Vito Fiorino and his friends were preparing to go fishing after sleeping the night on his boat docked off Lampedusa when one of them, Alessandro, heard piercing screams. It was about 6am on 3 October 2013. The group often ventured out to sea on the abandoned boat that Fiorino had brought back to life after moving to the tiny Sicilian island a few years earlier. But rarely would they spend the night.
"It was a dark night with lots of stars, no wind and a beautiful sea, and so we decided to sleep on the boat," Fiorino said. "Alessandro got the boat going as dawn broke and after a few metres stopped the engine and asked: 'Did you hear that noise?' He used a Sicilian word that means 'cries of anguish'. There was a huge flock of seagulls so I was convinced that the noise was coming from them."
Instead of fishing, they sailed further out to sea to explore where the sound was coming from. "What I saw was terrifying," Fiorino said. "There were about 200 people in the sea, screaming and crying for help."
Fiorino's 10-metre boat, called Gama, was the first to arrive on the scene after a flimsy vessel crammed with almost 500 people caught fire and sank not far from the shore of Lampedusa's famed Rabbit beach.
The bodies of 368 people were recovered in what was one of the Mediterranean's worst shipwrecks. It was also one of the most shameful episodes for Italy, whose coastguard had ignored repeated SOS calls, and for the EU.
This story is from the September 29, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the September 29, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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