POLICE FORENSIC EXPERTS were last night trying to determine how 11 people, believed to come from an African country, perished at sea.
The badly decomposed bodies were discovered in the cramped cabin of a
20-foot unnamed boat drifting about 70 nautical miles off the Ragged Point, St Philip coastline Saturday morning.
Police and Coast Guard officials were up to press time unable to verify their origins, but preliminary investigations indicated the deceased, believed to be all men, hailed from western Africa.
Among some of the personal items found on board the floating graveyard were an undisclosed sum of Euro currency and a document indicating travel aboard one of Senegal's airlines.
Sources close to the investigations believed the men, who were mostly dressed in shorts and colourful jerseys, might have died from hunger and thirst or exposure to the elements.
Earlier reports had indicated that the men were shot.
Sources also believe the men might have been refugees whose vessel went adrift and were probably exposed to the elements for several days before collapsing and dying of hunger.
The drama surrounding one of Barbados' worst cases of mass casualties began last Saturday morning when a fisherman reported the grim discovery to the Coast Guard.
The HMBS Trident, with a joint team of police forensic and Coast Guard officials, set sail from its Willoughby Fort base around 5 p.m., taking close to 18 hours to tow the vessel and its dead crew to land.
"On board the Trident was a forensic team from the Police Force and a medical practitioner. Once the vessel was located, we brought her into Carlisle Bay and handed over to the HMBS Endeavour which subsequently towed the boat to Willoughby Fort," Barbados Defence Force spokesman, Captain Sam Cumberbatch, told a Press briefing yesterday.
Sources indicated that because of the stench and "mummified" state of the bodies, it was difficult to assess their ages.
Officials from the Port Health Department checked the boat for any possible communicable diseases before forensic officers were allowed to investigate and remove the bodies, which were tagged and bagged for removal by workers from Two Sons Funeral Home.
Dozens of people gathered on the Wickham-Lewis Boardwalk along Wharf Road to get a glimpse of the boat and the victims.

It would be good to know where exactly these men came from, but the most puzzling thing is that they died of hunger?????? With all that flying fish in the sea???
O well, may they rest in peace.

p.s this must be the event of the week for Bajans. Sad though.

Is there a link for this story ??

Its a sad way to perish..

The horizontal waters between the coast of Africa to Barbados seem to not be monitored with all the ship traffic in the Atlantic by high seas authorities.

Interesting.

People die very easily on the high seas. I am suprised with the amount of the dead remaining on the boat. Most people jump off the boats into the sea due to high heat and shift in temparature, drinking seawater causing delusions, etc.

Nobody can catch those flying fish in the middle of the ocean even at full strength without some net and these men did not appear to have it. Flying fish jump out the water usually from dolphins and perhaps sharks.

THE 11 PEOPLE whose badly decomposed bodies were found in a small boat last weekend died of starvation and dehydration.




That is the preliminary conclusion of the findings of a post mortem conducted earlier this week. The findings have been placed on hold, but sources close to the investigation also told the WEEKEND NATION yesterday that foul play had been ruled out in the grisly discovery of the 11 bodies which were found in the cramped cabin of a small unnamed boat.

Up to late yesterday, police investigators were still awaiting word from their counterparts in Senegal, Africa, where it is believed the men originated and might have started their deadly trip.

Meanwhile, a Senegalese man, Ibrahima Dieme, believes one of the 11 corpses on the ill-fated boat that reached Barbados' waters last Saturday night is that of his brother.

Dieme told the WEEKEND NATION yesterday in an exclusive interview that his brother, 29-year-old Soukhar Diao Dieme, left Senegal for the Cape Verde Islands two months ago, with the intention of taking a boat from there to Brazil. (TS/PA)