Three Mexican fishermen lost at sea and given up for dead months ago have been rescued more than 5,000 miles from their home port after drifting half-way across the Pacific.

The men and their stricken boat were spotted by Taiwanese tuna fishermen last Wednesday near the tiny atoll of Baker's Island, midway between Hawaii and Australia and more than 5,000 miles (8,500km) from the resort town of San Blas, where they set off looking for shark more than nine months ago.

According to Eugene Muller, the manager of Koo's Fishing Company, whose vessel Koo's 102 is currently bringing the men to Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, the men are thin but in good health, after surviving on rainwater, raw fish and Bible readings.

"They were quite hungry," Mr Muller told The Los Angeles Times. "It's a long ways from Mexico to here."

After an initial failure to communicate with their Taiwanese rescuers, the survivors, Jesus Vidaña, Lucio Rendon and Salvador Ordoñez, wrote out their names and faxed them from the ship to Majuro, Mr Muller said, starting a chain of communication that led to the men's astonished families in San Blas.

Last night, the fishermen, who are all in their twenties, spoke to a Mexican television station from their rescue boat, which is expected to dock in Majuro in ten to fourteen days time after completing its scheduled fishing route.

"We ate raw sea gulls, ducks and fish. We ate everything raw... any fish that came near the boat we grabbed it and gulped it down," Señor Vidaña told Televisa, adding that it rained nearly every day during their crossing saving them from death by thirst.

Twice, said Señor Vidaña, the men thought their boat was about to sink: "The waves washed into the boat, and we thought we were going to die." And once the three went 15 days without food. During the long days the survivors took turns reading the Bible to maintain their spirits.

"We never lost hope because up there there’s God Almighty and I have a lot of faith in Him, and I knew He was going to help us... We prayed together all the time," he said.

Señor Vidaña, 27, said the men's journey began on October 28 last year when they set out from San Blas to fish for shark. They set out for a two or three-week trip without a radio or a mobile phone, but enough drinking water to survive a few days and some lemons.

But strong winds pushed them out of the fishing area and then one or both their engines broke down, leaving the 8 metre (27ft) long boat at the mercy of the strong currents and breezes off the Mexican shore that drive boats westwards into the Pacific.

"It was nine months and nine days," he said. "One of the guys on the boat has a watch that shows the months and the days."

Señor Rendon, also 27, said the men had drifted for weeks through empty seas without seeing another boat, until they happened across the fishing routes used by the tuna vessels of the Marshall Islands: "Then suddenly we saw ships going by and we’d reached the other side. We were with the Japanese and Chinese," he said.

"We were born again," he said. "This has been a miracle from God because we never lost hope."

Relatives of the men said they had scoured the coast near San Blas, just over 400 miles (642km) west of Mexico City, without success and had started mourning their deaths, some performing the novena, a nine-day series of prayers to guide their souls to heaven.

"I'm trembling all over and I think I'm going to have a heart attack," Saul Ordoñez, 42, a cousin of two of the fishermen, told The Los Angeles Times. "They went fishing and they never came back. We thought they were dead."

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