Captain rescued from stricken ship in UK

A seriously injured captain, five passengers and a crew member were successfully airlifted from a storm-stricken cargo ship off the Irish coast Saturday, a day after a previous attempt was called off amid powerful winds.

A Royal Navy helicopter rescued the captain of the Horncliff, which ran into trouble Friday in heavy seas off the Scilly Islands. British coast guards said weather in the area, about 200 miles south of Ireland, had since eased.

The captain was suffering from serious spinal injuries and was taken to a hospital in Treliske, west England, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said. One of the passengers and the crew member were less seriously hurt.

Coast guards said the refrigerated ship was ferrying bananas and other fruit from the Caribbean to the English port of Dover when it was caught in a fierce storm that washed some 90 containers overboard. They said the vessel, which is flying under a Liberian flag, suffered some damage but was in no danger of sinking.

Several other ships ran into difficulty as bad weather buffeted Britain's coasts this week.

The Riverdance ferry, which lost cargo after hitting a massive wave late Thursday, was still listing heavily in soft sand outside the English resort town of Blackpool on Saturday. Experts from salvage company Smit International were on board, working on how to refloat the boat.

In another incident, a trawler was trapped on rocks at St. Kilda, an isolated island in Scotland's Western Isles named a World Heritage Site for its sea bird colonies. The trawler's 14-member Spanish crew was evacuated Friday.

Meanwhile, off the Dutch coast, an operation was under way to re-float a Chinese cargo ship that ran aground in strong winds early Saturday, Smit International spokeswoman Claudia van Andel said. The Chinese crew were lifted off the ship shortly after it ran aground, she said.

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Associated Press Writer Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.