Two rescued at sea from sinking fishing boat off Marsascala

Maltese fishermen have always joked that the sea owns half our calendar—feast days, football finals, even weddings get planned around wind patterns and moon tides. Yesterday afternoon that old adage proved itself in the most dramatic way when a Marsascala trawler, the “Santa Katarina”, began taking on water five nautical miles south-east of St Thomas Bay. By the time the Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) rescue helicopter clattered overhead, the two fishermen clinging to the wheelhouse roof had already stripped off their Saint Peter medallions and tucked them into their pockets, a centuries-old superstition that you never offer your protector to the waves while still in peril.

The call to the AFM Operations Centre came in at 14:37. Within eleven minutes, the Melita 1 patrol boat was slicing past Delimara lighthouse while Rescue 139 thundered above the tuna pens that dot the horizon like floating football pitches. From the cliff-top bar at Marsascala’s Xatt is-Sajjieda, tourists nursing Cisk stubbies watched the orange helicopter hover, its downdraft whipping up a halo of spray. Mobile-phone footage—already doing the rounds on TikTok under the Maltese hashtag #GħajnunaFil-Baħar—shows the winchman dropping into the swell and hauling up 62-year-old Salvu “Il-Buffu” Camilleri, a third-generation lampuki netter whose forearms still bear the tattooed coordinates of every fishing bank from Filfla to Lampedusa.

Minutes later, his nephew Etienne, 28, followed. Both were flown to Mater Dei Hospital for observation; Salvu later joked from the ward that the only thing bruised was his ego—and maybe the price of lampuki next week. By dusk, the half-submerged Santa Katarina was being towed backwards into Marsascala creek, her red hull listing like a tipsy festa statue, greeted by a spontaneous guard of honour: children on scooters, grandmothers with rosaries, and the village’s brass-band club striking up a jaunty victory march usually reserved for parish titular feasts.

In Marsascala, fishing is more than livelihood—it is the marrow of identity. The village’s nickname, “Wied il-Għajn”, evokes the sweet-water springs that once lured Phoenician seafarers, and every alleyway seems to end in a net-draped balcony or a garage scented with octopus ink. The near-tragedy has rekindled a communal reflex older than the Knights: when someone’s boat is in trouble, every kitchen on the front becomes a crisis centre. Within an hour, the parish Facebook group had posted a call for kafe’ u te’ at the fishermen’s kiosk; by 7 p.m. the plastic tables were heaving with ħobż biż-żejt, pastizzi and arguments about whether modern fibreglass hulls can ever replace the forgiving buoyancy of old luzzus.

Local councillor Marvic Attard Gialanze told Hot Malta that the incident should trigger an urgent review of safety grants for small-scale operators. “Our fleet is ageing faster than the men who sail her,” she said, noting that EU funds earmarked for vessel modernisation have been underspent since 2021. Meanwhile, veteran skipper Nenu Borg—who lost two fingers to a winch in 1989—recalled how, in his father’s day, every boat carried a sealed bottle of lamp oil and a tinderbox: “If you capsized, you lit a floating fire so the village could see where to row.” Today, the AFM’s €50 million radar network does the spotting, but the impulse to look seaward every evening, he insists, is unchanged.

Tourism operators are already bracing for a surge of bookings from foreign anglers keen to fish alongside “real Maltese heroes”. Etienne, still in hospital scrubs, laughed off the idea: “Hero? I just didn’t want to swim with my boots on.” His uncle, however, has promised that when Santa Katarina is patched up, the first catch will be auctioned for the Lifeboat Service—an echo of the old suffragium, the medieval tithe of fish to the Order of St John that once kept Malta’s coastal watchtowers stocked.

As fireworks crackled from the nearby parish of St Anne’s last night—coinciding with the feast of St Peter’s Chains—many villagers saw the timing as providence. “San Pietru sabuhom,” one elderly woman murmured: Saint Peter found them. Whether by divine hand or human courage, Marsascala has once again learned that the sea gives and the sea takes, but rarely without witnesses. And in a village where every balcony flies a plastic flag of the Madonna of Pompeii, witness is another word for family.