Man tells of ship fire ordeal

A Shropshire businessman today spoke of his ordeal after having to abandon a burning ship and wait more than two hours to be rescued from the Adriatic sea.

Rob Cunningham, 45, from Weston-under-Redcastle, and three other men were plucked from a sinking life-raft 13 miles off the coast of Italy on Tuesday.

Mr Cunningham was part of a crew including his brother-in-law David Fuller, who had just bought the boat, and Jim Prendergrast and Matt Sillars, who were tasked with sailing the 30ft boat Kratos from Rimini to Gibraltar.

But at about 10pm on Tuesday as Mr Cunningham, who owns the award- winning Maynards Farm Shop, took his turn on watch a fire broke out on board the boat.

He said: “We tried to fight the fire but the whole boat was filling up with smoke very quickly. We started putting out distress calls but we weren’t getting any response on the radio so we used the sat-phone to contact the coastguard in Falmouth.

“It was all quite scary, especially as it was dark and we couldn’t put the fire out. As the smoke was getting worse the skipper decided to abandon ship.

“There was a lot of fuel on board as we had just started our journey so it was like a powder keg.”

Mr Prendergrast suffered a minor burn to his hand fighting the fire, but the other three were uninjured.

After a tricky transfer into the life raft the men sat tight while British coastguards alerted their Italian counterparts to the emergency.

They were eventually picked up by an Italian rescue boat and taken back to shore along with their boat.

Mr Cunningham arrived home yesterday afternoon, and despite his ordeal on the high seas has not ruled out a return voyage.

He said: “I knew some of the other guys were thinking we wouldn’t get out of it, but I was confident we would. It was after we were rescued I got a lump in my throat and started thinking about my family.

“Since moving up to Shropshire this is the first proper holiday I have had and it ended pretty quickly. We were glad to be back on dry land though. Thankfully everyone was alright.

“I would like to go back out there and complete what we started out to do if I can find the time.

“It is a shame because it was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime.”

By Andy Rogers