The bodies of a child and an adult who went missing at sea off the coast of Tróia, in the municipality of Grândola (Setúbal), have already been found and the other two castaways have yet to be located, the Maritime Police told Lusa.
The captain of the Port of Setúbal and local commander of the Maritime Police, Serrano Augusto, told Lusa that “the body of the child and the body of one of the men were found” and, at around 2.20pm, they were “being recovered” from the water.
“One of the bodies was located by the Maritime Police lance and the Air Force helicopter spotted the other,” both “in the vicinity of the sunken vessel,” he added.
Now, “the search continues to locate the bodies of the other two castaways”, two men, said the commander.
At 10:05 a.m., the Maritime Police received an alert about the sinking of a pleasure boat about a mile and a half (approximately three kilometers) from Tróia, in the municipality of Grândola.
The shipwreck happened at around 07:00, commander Serrano Augusto told Lusa. He explained that of the five men on board, one man, the 62-year-old helmsman, was rescued alive.
According to a statement from the National Maritime Authority (AMN), the man “was rescued by a boat that was nearby”.
The other four people, three men, “in their 20s, 30s and 40s”, and a 12-year-old boy, were missing in the water, the latter and one of the adults having already been found lifeless.
According to the captain of the Port of Setúbal and local commander of the Maritime Police, the five people on board the boat that sank are Portuguese and live in the “Santiago do Cacém area”, also on the Alentejo coast.
Although he recognizes that, for the time being, he doesn’t know if there are any relatives among the four missing in the water, “there is a father, the oldest adult, and a son, the 12-year-old boy,” Augusto Serrano told Lusa.
The search continues and “will be reinforced in the afternoon with divers and a drone from the Navy’s Operational Experimentation Center,” said Commander Augusto Serrano.
According to AMN, immediately after the alert, “a vessel from the Setúbal Maritime Police Local Command and a vessel from the Sesimbra Life-Saving Station” were activated to the scene, and searches were also carried out on land by members of the fire department and the GNR.
“A Portuguese Navy ship and a Portuguese Air Force aircraft were activated at the scene,” the AMN statement also reads.
Commander Serrano Augusto told Lusa that it was a Koala helicopter from the Portuguese Air Force (FAP).
The Maritime Police Psychology Office was also activated and is providing support.
This morning, the Setúbal local commander of the Maritime Police admitted to Lusa that the boat may have capsized when it was hit by “a sea wave, which caused the passengers to be ‘spat out’ into the water”.
62-year-old helmsman of shipwrecked vessel in Troia rescued alive
