• Spent seven minutes submerged in the sea • Brought back to life by 10 minutes of CPR

He, a doctor who works in an Oxford hospital, still cannot believe it. It must be a miracle, he says, humbled by the coincidences involved.

As a result, a girl, seven or eight years old, is now back to her normal healthy self after last Wednesday’s trauma that saw her submerged under an overturned boat for around seven minutes and completely lifeless for 10 more minutes until CPR (mouth-to-mouth resuscitation) brought her back to life.

At around 4.30pm, Dr Mark Portelli, an orthopaedic surgeon at Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford, here on holiday, was on a yacht owned by his friend Andrew Mamo and returning from a day’s outing to Paradise Bay.

Coming round l-Aħrax Point at Mellieħa Bay, they heard shouting in the distance and saw six people swimming in the open sea around an overturned boat.

As soon as they saw them coming, these people started shouting, saying that there was a girl under the overturned boat.

Dr Portelli promptly jumped in, although he has no training in saving lives at sea. Twice he dived under the boat, saw the girl but could not reach her.

Coming up the second time, the girl’s mother, who did not know how to swim and was in a panic, grabbed him by the neck and almost drowned him.

Mr Mamo quickly jumped in and got the woman off his (Dr Portelli’s) back and on to his yacht. Dr Portelli then dived in again and this time he grabbed hold of the girl and brought her up. “I thought she had gone by then,” he said, as she had swallowed a great deal of water.

Nevertheless, he began, while treading water, administering CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After around eight minutes, he started to feel a pulse. It was only after around 40 minutes from rescuing her from under the boat that she became stable.

Meanwhile, there was another drama in the group – a man from the group on the (overturned) boat collapsed.

As stated in an AFM press release issued later that evening, P32 patrol boat and an Alouette helicopter were dispatched by the AFM to assist the people in distress. The girl was winched aboard the Alouette and taken to Mater Dei.

Mr Mamo’s yacht (and not the patrol boat, as AFM said in their statement) then took the man to the Marfa jetty where an ambulance was waiting. The patrol boat accompanied Mr Mamo’s yacht to Marfa.

The causes of this near disaster are still not clear. According to the rest of the small girl’s party, a big yacht passed by at full speed and its wake overturned the small boat.

The next day, Dr Portelli went to Mater Dei’s ITU and to his great surprise found the girl laughing and playing.

Both Dr Portelli and his wife, who was with him on Mr Mamo’s yacht, are still in shock. They still believe the girl was very near death.

To top it all, the Portelli couple had their son, also seven years old, with them on Mr Mamo’s yacht. Dr Portelli, in his work at Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, sees many accidents while on duty. But this close encounter on the high seas was something he had never experienced – and hopes he never will again.