300 boat people rescued in Pacific by US Navy ship

The US Navy ship Sealift Arctic rescued 300 starving Vietnamese refugees who had drifted eight days in their boat without food or water. The ship found the refugees in the Pacific Ocean about 240 nautical miles south- southeast of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). It was the biggest group of refugees the Navy has rescued since July 1979, when President Carter ordered the Seventh Fleet to search for Indochinese boat people.