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“We're doing an activity with the kids and all the people,” Andrew Triglio, first mate for Captain Memo’s Pirate Cruise, told WTSP. “Then we noticed the boat to the side of us drifting with the roof all messed up, and they were screaming to help us, and then we jumped into action from there.”

“Mayday, mayday, mayday! There’s been a boat collision. The Clearwater ferry, underneath the Clearwater Memorial Causeway. The Clearwater ferry is adrift,” according to mayday transmission audio made after the crash released by the Coast Guard, WFLA said.

Triglio also said he saw the boat that hit the ferry lingering for a few minutes after the crash and he initially thought they were also Good Samaritans helping the victims — until it abruptly left the scene.

“We thought it was a passenger helping them, like another boat, because we didn't see who hit them,” he said. “It may have been that boat, and then knocked [the ferry] into the sandbar, and they took off.”