Stowaways

After a stowaway fell from a cargo container and broke his ankle at the Port of Long Beach, 22 others were discovered Monday night. They had survived more than two weeks at sea in the hold of a ship from China. The stowaways were discovered as a crane was off-loading cargo from the ship Maple River at Berth 254, Long Beach Fire Capt. Mike Garcia said. The ship had left mainland China March 14 with one stop in Vancouver. Paramedics were examining the stowaways to determine their conditions.

Four young men without a country got an early Christmas present Saturday--a new home in America, at least temporarily. The Vietnamese had stowed away on the Greek cargo ship Silver Ibex and spent the last four months at sea while a succession of nations refused them entry.

Police on Wednesday stormed a Taiwanese ship and arrested the captain, who has been accused along with his officers of setting adrift three Romanian stowaways while on the high seas, government officials said. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police boarded the Maersk Dubai to arrest the captain after he refused to leave the vessel and come down to the Halifax dock to meet authorities.

After spending 15 days inside a cargo container shipped from Shanghai, 18 men and four women were discovered early Wednesday at the Port of Seattle. The stowaways made the arduous journey in the hopes of finding work here, officials said. All 22 people, said to be in their 20s and 30s, were apparently in relatively good health after surviving the trip in the 40-foot container stacked on the cargo ship Rotterdam.

Doctors say the man who survived the 7 1/2-hour flight from French Polynesia inside the wheel well of an Air France jumbo jet is in good condition, eating and drinking, but hasn't revealed his reasons for risking his life to reach Los Angeles. The man, who can write and understand English, has had good vital signs since Friday, and doctors expected to release him by Sunday.

A stowaway who survived a freezing, 7 1/2-hour flight in the wheel well of a jetliner traveling to Los Angeles from French Polynesia was recovering from his ordeal, authorities said Friday. Doctors said the man was suffering from "very severe hypothermia" with a core body temperature of 79 degrees when he arrived in serious condition at UCLA Medical Center. A body temperature below 85 degrees is normally fatal, according to experts.

Somewhere on the oceans of the world a weather-beaten fishing trawler is about to dock at a tiny island. Tonight, tomorrow--but surely someday soon--a leaky grain barge is headed aground on a far-off atoll. And so will commence another maritime disaster destined to inflict greater punishment on the world's wildlife than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Only no one will clean up this mess, probably ever. And judging by history, no news reporters and cameras will rush to the scene.

Of all the illegal immigrants who arrive here each year, this kid was different--with a 1,000-kilowatt smile and an incredible tale of surviving a three-hour flight from Colombia crammed into the wheel well of a cargo jet. The media could not get enough of 13-year-old Guillermo Rosales. He was orphaned, he said, when his parents were killed in a bus accident. He lived on the streets of Cali and slept in an abandoned airplane.

The day after 32 Chinese nationals were found in two shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles, federal and local authorities said Sunday that they were trying to unravel what appeared to be a human smuggling operation. "Obviously, our intention at the moment is to develop a smuggling case," said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Evidence has been found that supports Philippine sailors' harrowing allegations that three Romanian stowaways were thrown to their deaths from a Taiwanese container ship on the high seas, police said. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police declined to specify what evidence they found aboard the Taiwan-based Maersk Dubai after another day of searching the vessel docked in Halifax and interviewing two Taiwanese and four Philippine sailors.