Lost Livestock Export Ship Gulf Livestock 1: ‘Every Chance They’re Alive Waiting To Be Rescued’

By RNZ’s Hamish Cardwell

A spokesman for the family of a man missing at sea said there is a good chance he is still alive and waiting to be rescued.

Scott Harris was on Gulf Livestock 1, along with 42 other crew members and thousands of cows, which is still missing in the East China Sea after it was hit by a typhoon earlier this month.

The search was suspended last week.

Anna Blackwell said there were text messages from the crew saying the captain had said to prepare the large 45-seat lifeboat and that no debris from the ship had been found, so it was possible the crew would make it to the raft and he would have washed up on a nearby island.

“I think there is a good chance they are alive waiting to be rescued.

“There are so many uninhabited islands out there that they really could be Robinson Crusoe – handing them around for quite some time.”

He said the crew would have known they were in trouble for some time and it seems incredible that the experienced sailors had not prepared the life raft accordingly.

Blackwell said the owner of the Gulf Navigation Holdings ship needed to do more to locate the sunken ship, which was the key to answering the families’ questions.

“There are so many ‘what ifs’ unless they can get on that ship.

“That lifeboat … was shot or trapped and … the lifeboat and the men are at the bottom of the ocean.”

He said that if the boat was found with the large life raft still on it, families would know they might start crying.

“This heartbreaking hope that is happening will unfortunately be over, but at least everyone would know what they are dealing with.”

Desperate, Harris’s mother, Karen Adrian, is considering whether she can mortgage her home to finance a submersible to search for the sunken ship.

Blackwell said it appeared that authorities and the ship’s owners believed the men were dead and that is why they weren’t searching.

“If that’s what they believe, they need to tell us why they believe that … or they need to take a look at that ship and see what evidence there is.”