Many say they have lost one or both parents and, as the eldest sons in their families, they feel responsible for supporting loved ones. Many of the boys had started their journeys years earlier, when they left home hoping to make money to send back to their families. More than 80% of the group are unaccompanied minors, aged under 18. SOS Mediterranée had received an alert about the rubber boat from Alarm Phone, an emergency helpline for migrants in trouble at sea, and European border agency Frontex. "It's either you reach Europe or you die at sea," the teenager tells me. One says it didn't put him off because he believes those migrants would have had the same mindset as him. Those migrants had also set sail from Libya. Some have also been following news on social media of the Greek disaster - one of the deadliest migrant sinkings in years, in which up to 750 people are believed to have died - which happened less than two weeks earlier. "Seven times I have been trying," one 17-year-old says.Įvery migrant I speak to has friends who have died attempting the same journey. Many say it was not their first attempt at reaching Europe - some had narrowly avoided death, having been picked up from boats in distress and returned to Libya.
The migrants tell us they were not ignorant to the risks they were facing.
Most speak English - all of their names have been changed. So, as we set sail, we speak to some of the migrants in rooms set up as medical facilities and accommodation areas on the deck of the ship. This follows a new law which requires such vessels to immediately head to a port rather than continue to patrol for more migrant boats. The charity alerts Italian authorities, who quickly assign the southern city of Bari as the port at which to disembark, telling them to head there "without delay". The group are rushed back to SOS Mediterranée's ship, the Ocean Viking, where they undergo medical checks and receive new clothes and drawstring bags containing supplies like toothbrushes. One later tells me that when he grabbed the hand of one of the rescuers, he thought: "Now I have entered Europe." Some of the migrants grin as they sit down in the rescue speedboat - one takes a selfie on his phone. Many of the boys have previously been pulled back to Libya by its coastguard, which the EU has provided with ships, training and funding. There is panic during the rescue as a Libyan coastguard vessel appears on the horizon. Many cannot swim, armed only with the inner tubes of tyres to use as flotation devices should they end up in the sea. One wears the familiar pale blue of a Manchester City football shirt, others are holding iPhones. One dropped his phone in the sea in the melee. Some were determined to keep going, while others were begging to give up and try again later. Some later tell me that shortly before rescuers arrived, a fight had almost broken out on board the over-packed boat. The boys and young men, most from The Gambia, have been at sea for 15 hours and have made it 54 nautical miles from the Libyan town of Castelverde, near Tripoli. They quickly pull the migrants onboard the vessels one by one, counting as they go. Rescue workers from the charity SOS Mediterranée don helmets and life jackets as they race to the scene in speedboats. They spoke to the BBC's Alice Cuddy - on board a rescue vessel patrolling the sea for migrant boats in distress.ĪTHENS - As the giant red and white rescue ship sails across an expanse of the Mediterranean Sea, the horizon is interrupted by the sight of a dark blue inflatable boat, crammed with bobbing heads. Migrants saved in one of the first rescue operations in the Mediterranean since hundreds of people died when a boat sank off the Greek coast, say nothing could deter them from trying to reach Europe.
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