US mail boat saves swimmer trying to cross river from Canada into Detroit, MI crew says
A United States mail boat rescued a man trying to swim from Canada to Detroit overnight, the Michigan-based crew said.
While preparing to make a delivery Sept. 23, the crew of the J.W. Westcott II heard an emergency broadcast about a man in the Detroit River and set out to help find him, a crew member told WXYZ.
Just after 10:30 p.m., a deckhand “spotted a man swimming inside a life ring” and lifted him onto the deck, according to a Facebook post from Captain Neil Schultheiss.
Schultheiss said the man appeared to be “disoriented,” and he told the crew he was an American citizen from Florida.
The man, who entered the water near Windsor, made it roughly halfway across the river but was struggling even with a flotation device, Schultheiss told WWJ.
While on board, the man “kept pacing around on the bow,” saying “he had to get back to the U.S.,” the captain told CTV News.
The man was then taken to shore by the Detroit Fire Department for medical care, the captain said.
The J.W. Westcott Company
In operation for 150 years, the J.W. Westcott Company makes deliveries to freighters on the Detroit River.
The J.W. Westcott became an official U.S. Postal Service mail boat and earned the world’s first non-military floating postal ZIP code—48222 – according to the company website.
