An official at the Maritime Rescue Center of Taizhou City, informed that all the 23 crew members of a sunken cargo ship off the Zhenjiang coast has been rescued by a passing fishing boat. According to him the sailors, all Chinese, were in good shape. The official explained that the accident happened early morning and at about 10 a.m. people aboard a locally fishing boat, which was passing the site of the shipwreck, spotted the sailors huddled on a life raft and came to their rescue.
After investigation it was found that the cargo ship was sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone. The ship was owned by a Hong Kong-registered company known as Tiandao Chouqin International Shipping S.A., which was based in Zhoushan, an archipelago off Zhejiang Province.
It is informed that the cargo ship, the “New Hangzhou”, was inaccurately said to be registered in Panama in a previous report on the mishap. However, the ship was carrying 9,000 tons of cargo and was said to have left Tianjin Port en route to Vietnam. After the news of ship wreck the Maritime Rescue Center of Taizhou and the coast guard dispatched seven ships to search for the sailors but they failed to locate due to dense fog. However, the cause of the sinking is still under probe.
