THE injured captain of a stricken cargo ship was airlifted to safety this morning after force 10 gales defeated earlier rescue attempts.
A Royal Navy helicopter flew him to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Treliske.
The Met Office yesterday issued new severe weather warnings for snow and ice in the east of Scotland.
Elsewhere in Britain, 1,600 homes remained without power and some key roads were still blocked after strong winds and snow drifts hit much of the country, with two people killed in the bad weather.
The Highways Agency has warned motorists to take care on icy roads, after more than 100 vehicles, including bus loads of primary children and pensioners, were trapped last night on the A66 in County Durham.
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Conditions were particularly bad in Scotland. A young mother was killed when the car she was in flipped over on an ice-covered road in Aberdeenshire. Her 18-month-old daughter survived the crash. And a man was killed on the outskirts of Inverness after being struck by a maintenance train during heavy snow storms. His death is being treated as a suspected suicide.
The cold has begun to thaw today, and subsiding winds enabled a helicopter winchman to reach the ship with the injured Lithuanian captain.
The Horncliff, a 12,900-ton Liberian-flagged cargo ship, was lying 225 miles off the Isles of Scilly, southwest of Land’s End. The refrigerated vessel was on its way from Costa Rica to Dover. After having its engines restarted, the ship was this morning being escorted to Falmouth for a full inspection.
The captain was suffering from serious spinal injuries and internal bleeding, Falmouth coastguards said. One crew member and five passengers were also lifted to Cornwall this morning. Two of them were taken to hospital — a German passenger had a fractured collarbone, a crew member a blow to the head — but the injuries were not thought to be serious. Another 24 crew remained on the ship.
Dahne Carstensen, 64, from Hamburg, was aboard the Horncliff for a honeymoon cruise with his new wife, Suzanne, when the storm hit.
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Suzanne Carstensen, 50, who was on the bridge with her husband and the captain, said the ship was hit by three large waves.
“I thought it was our last moment of life,” she said.
“The ship went right over and then the containers came off the ship and it came back up. Then we knew we had survived. It was really horrible and you cannot imagine unless you are there.”
Dahne Carstensen suffered a fractured shoulder and broken ribs, his wife said.
On Friday night, a helicopter had spent an hour hovering over the ship but was unable to get a winchman on to the deck in the 12m (40ft) waves. The ship had no power, and language difficulties made communication with the crew difficult.
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Martin Leslie, watch officer for the Falmouth Coast Guard, said they remained on alert as the weather was expected to deteriorate to storm force 10 again: “The cargo on board is a particular concern as more may wash overboard.”
The vessel lost at least 59 containers of bananas and other fruit in the storm, suffered some damage and was listing slightly, but the coastguard said it was in no danger of sinking.
Salvage crews are still struggling to refloat the Riverdance, a ferry that ran aground near Blackpool late on Thursday.
The National Trust for Scotland has launched emergency procedures to deal with rats it says may have reached the bird sanctuary of St Kilda from another foundering ship.
A British-registered trawler ran aground in the remote archipelago west of the Hebrides. Its 14 Spanish crew were winched to safety but the rats are feared to have escaped the wreck.
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The island is home to important colonies of sea birds, including gannets, puffins and guillemots, which nest on the ground.
Susan Bain, from the National Trust for Scotland, said in a radio interview: “It certainly has the potential to be devastating to St Kilda, which is a World Heritage Site for its sea bird colonies.”
Severe winter weather has struck around the world, with 60 people reported to have died in blizzards in China and another 10 killed in the northern United States, where snow storms have left thousands of travelers stranded. In Indonesia, 1,500 people have been left homeless by floods in Jakarta, the capital.