SUVA, Fiji — Three teenage boys who spent 50 days adrift in a tiny boat in the South Pacific walked ashore on shaky legs Friday after their chance rescue, which was celebrated on their home island hundreds of miles away as a miracle that brought them back from the dead.
The trio — Samuel Pelesa and Filo Filo, both 15, and Edward Nasau, 14, of the Atafu atoll, north of Samoa — told rescuers they survived on rainwater, a handful of coconuts, raw fish and a seagull that landed on their 12-foot-long aluminum boat.
The boys set off Oct. 5 for a nearby island. It is not known how they went missing, but the outboard motor might have broken down at sea.
They were picked up Wednesday by a fishing trawler, undernourished, severely dehydrated and badly sunburned but otherwise well. The ship’s first mate said the area they were in is way off any normal commercial shipping routes.
They drifted 800 miles from where they set out — Tokelau, a bucolic collection of coral atolls that is New Zealand’s territory.
A Fiji navy patrol boat met the trawler Friday and escorted it into the harbor of its capital, Suva. The teens were met by New Zealand consular officials and taken to a hospital for medical checks. Looking thin, the three walked off the boat without speaking to reporters.
Cmdr. Francis Kean, Fiji’s naval commander, who was among those who met the teens, said they had been unable to keep down solid food. The boys would be fed fluids and carefully watched by doctors at a military hospital.
