Hope arrived on the radio, late in the afternoon with August sunshine blasting the deck.
After tortuous negotiations with authorities from four countries, Italy had finally granted us a port of safety. We were allowed to disembark the people we had rescued, in accordance with international law.
We had 114 passengers on board our ship, the Sea Eye 4, where I was volunteering as part of the crew. Overall, we had rescued three boats in distress. Some of the rescued had drifted without food, fuel, or water for days. One man had been unconscious for over 24 hours and would have been unlikely to survive much longer without aid.
