Six dead and seven missing after fishing boat sinks off Falkland Islands coast

Fourteen people made it on to a life raft and were rescued by two other fishing boats that were nearby when the 176ft vessel, the Argos Georgia, sank in the South Atlantic near Argentina, Spanish authorities said.

Officials from Spain’s Pontevedra province in south-eastern Galicia identified 10 of the crew members as Spaniards, but did not elaborate on their condition.

They said there were several other nationalities among the crew. The Falkland Islands said it had received an emergency signal on Monday from the Argos Georgia.

The signal indicated that the boat was east of Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, when it began taking on water.

At the time, the ship was sailing at a speed of 35 knots per hour, according to monitoring site MarineTraffic.com.

Aircraft and several vessels were deployed in the search-and-rescue effort.

The Argos Georgia is managed by Argos Froyanes Ltd, a privately-owned joint British-Norwegian company, and was sailing under the flag of St Helena, another of Britain’s overseas territories in the South Atlantic.

The boat was built in 2018, according to Vesselfinder, a website for tracking marine traffic.

Britain and Argentina went to war over the Falkland Islands in 1982, when Argentine troops embarked on an ill-fated invasion that left 649 Argentines and 255 British soldiers dead.