SEA Semester student Anita Kasch finally got a chance to use her foreign language skills in a real-world situation, and she may have saved some lives in the process.

Kasch, a senior environmental science major, was instrumental in rescuing the occupants of a crippled boat packed with starving Haitian refugees that ran across the SEA Semester ship Corwith Cramer March 9 off the coast of Jamaica.

She used her proficiency in French, the Haitian national language, to learn of the refugees’ plight, relay their story to the students and staff, and eventually get all 49 on board the SEA Semester ship.

The refugees, who had been without food or water for five days and were sailing with a broken tiller, had not seen another boat in days. Kasch said that the 35 adults and 14 children were “frantic and scared” when they were found.

“I had to assure them a few times that we weren’t going to leave them behind,” she said. “The first thing I had to do was calm them down.”

The Haitians’ 25-foot boat did not even show up on the 134-foot Corwith Cramer’s radar. Kasch said that, a figure could be seen waving a red flag, a sign of distress, as the boat floated closer.

Kasch and the other students could see the 49 refugees packed in the tiny boat as the boat drifted by.

“When they came right alongside, we could see how many were in the boat,” she said. “To see so many faces looking up at you, it was overwhelming.”

As the most proficient French speaker on the ship, Kasch was called to speak with the refugees. After calming them down, Kasch extracted their story and related it to her colleagues.

After an emergency meeting with the ships crew of 22 students and 11 staff, a unanimous decision was made to take the Haitians aboard.

“There were no other vessels in the radius to help them,” said Kasch. “We had the obligation, the want, and the need to help them. It’s the law of the sea.”

After giving them the conditions for boarding, including no weapons and a one-person-at-a-time stipulation, the boat-switching process began.

When the nervous refugees were aboard, the ship began its 14-hour trip to nearby Jamaica, arriving at 2 a.m. The refugees were given food and water en route, and aside from a little seasickness, left the ship for a halfway house without further problems.

Kasch said that the situation was a very lucky one for all parties involved.

“It was just the luck of being there,” she said. “If we’d been an hour behind, we would have missed them.”

If Kasch and her crew had missed the rudderless boat, the Haitians many not have survived.

“They were pretty near gone when they found them,” said George Boyd, director of the Cherrington Global Scholars Program. “We had to assume that they couldn’t have survived much longer.”

To find a boat with someone speaking their native language could have been the difference between life and death.

Boyd expressed his and the Cherrington Program’s congratulations and pride in Kasch and her fellow students for their part in averting a tragedy.

“We’re simply proud of their recognizing a human emergency and responding to it,” he said. “We wish that more students had these valuable language skills and the opportunity to use them, but hopefully not under these circumstances.”

Kasch said she was just glad to be of service to the Haitians.

“I was just happy I could put my French to use, and give them food and water,” she said. “You don’t hear about the ones that don’t make it.”

The SEA (Sea Education Association) Semester Program is affiliated with Boston University. It became a Cherrington Global Scholars Program at the request of the University of Denver Biology Department. Students on the program run the ship as the crew with the help of a limited number of staff members.