ROME — The Italian authorities recovered from the bottom of the sea on Thursday a fishing vessel containing the remains of hundreds of migrants who drowned when the ship sank off the coast of Libya last year, a tragedy that spurred Europe to revive search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean.

Only 28 migrants survived the shipwreck in April 2015; after the disaster, 169 bodies were retrieved. But the rest of the bodies — hundreds more — have remained trapped in the hull of the vessel for 14 months. With the ship now taken to shore, those remains will be removed for examination and identification by forensic experts, the Italian Navy said.

Initially, 900 were feared drowned; that estimate was later lowered to between 700 and 800. The number is still not clear, but on Thursday, the navy estimated the number of corpses in the ship at “no fewer than 300,” Rear Adm. Pietro Covino told reporters in Augusta, Sicily. The passengers came from a variety of countries, including Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Gambia, Nigeria and Somalia.

“That vessel contains stories, faces, people, and not only a number of corpses,” Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy wrote on Facebook on Thursday, posting the navy’s pictures from the recovery operation.