A passing fishing boat reportedly saved 23 crew members of a sunken cargo ship off the eastern coast of China early on Thursday.

The sailors, all Chinese, were in good shape, said an official at the Maritime Rescue Center of Taizhou City.

The official said that at about 10 a.m., people aboard a locally registered fishing boat, which was passing the site of the shipwreck, spotted the sailors huddled on a life raft and came to their rescue.

The center also verified that the cargo ship, which was sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone, was owned by a Hong Kong-registered company known as Tiandao Chouqin International Shipping S.A., which was based in Zhoushan, an archipelago off Zhejiang Province.

The cargo ship, the "New Hangzhou", was inaccurately said to be registered in Panama in a previous report on the mishap.

The ship, which was carrying 9,000 tons of cargo, was said to have left Tianjin Port en route to Vietnam.

The Maritime Rescue Center of Taizhou and the coast guard dispatched seven ships to search for the sailors, but the search was hampered by dense fog.

The cause of the sinking has not yet been determined.

(Xinhua News Agency, March 13, 2008)