At least 6 people are dead and 7 are missing after a fishing vessel sinks in the South Atlantic

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- A fishing boat carrying 27 people sank nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) off the Falkland Islands, leaving at least six people dead and seven missing, British and Spanish officials said Tuesday.

Fourteen people made it onto a life raft and were rescued by two other fishing boats that were nearby when the 176-foot (54-meter) Argos Georgia sank after being suddenly flooded with water in the South Atlantic, Spanish authorities said.

Gusty winds and strong waves damaged the fishing vessel and caused water to rapidly fill the hull, the Argentine navy said.

Spain's Pontevedra province in southeastern Galicia identified 10 of the crew members as Spaniards. Officials declined to comment on the condition of crew members because relatives were still being notified. But on the social media platform X, the provincial government identified one of the dead as the ship's cook from the town of Baiona and said there were several other nationalities among the crew.

Authorities in the Falkland Islands — the British-controlled archipelago that Argentina calls the Malvinas and claims as its own — said they received an emergency signal 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, according to monitoring site MarineTraffic.com.

A helicopter, another aircraft and several vessels were deployed in the rescue effort. The Falkland Islands government said the helicopter crew had spotted survivors stranded at sea Monday but was forced to suspend rescue operations due to rough water, reduced visibility and windy conditions. The efforts resumed when the storm subsided Tuesday.

The 14 survivors rescued as of Tuesday evening were taken to Stanley and transferred to a hospital for treatment, British officials said.

The Argos Georgia was 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 remaining overseas territories in the South Atlantic.

“Our crew members are true professionals and have regular training for such a situation,” the company said in a statement. “We trust in their ability to use the safety equipment to the best of their ability.”

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

The search and rescue mission — in spanning the disputed maritime boundary between Argentina and the Falkland Islands — dredged up old questions about sovereignty claims in the frigid seas east of Tierra del Fuego.

Britain maintains territorial rights within 200 miles around the archipelago, an exclusion zone established after its 1982 victory over Argentine troops that had seized the islands. The war killed 649 Argentines and 255 British soldiers.

The humiliation of Argentina's defeat in that bloody 10-week war strains relations between the nations to this day.

The islands are still defended by British warships, planes and submarines. When the crew of Argos Georgia called for help, British authorities said they dispatched boats and helicopter to the scene but made no mention of coordination with their Argentine counterparts.

The Argentine navy independently said it had received the vessel's distress call and “assumed management of the search-and-rescue case.”

While British teams failed to save the stranded crew, Argentina said its own maritime authorities coordinated the deployment of fishing boats to the life rafts “to rescue survivors despite extreme weather conditions.”