Three men rescued from Pacific island after creating ‘help’ sign on beach

The men spelled out ‘help’ with palm fronds (US Coast Guard/AP)

Three men stranded on an uninhabited Pacific island survived for more than a week and used palm fronds to spell out “help” on the beach – leading to a rescue by Navy and Coast Guard pilots who spotted the sign from several thousand feet in the air.

They had embarked on March 31 in a 20ft boat with an outboard motor from Pulawat Atoll, a small island with about 1,000 inhabitants in the Federated States of Micronesia about 1,800 miles east of the Philippines.