FAI hears mayday call
Lost fisherman is heard telling Coastguard: ‘Going down fast’
A fatal accident inquiry into the sinking of a fishing boat off Easdale with the loss of skipper Scott MacAlister heard his last words in Oban Sheriff Court on Tuesday.
Sheriff Patrick Hughes told his family they could find the evidence difficult.
Scott MacAlister’s mayday call aboard the Speedwell was picked up at 1.06pm on April 25, 2013. ‘Going down fast off the point of Easdale,’ the 40-year-old father of three said. ‘Just about to go under.’
The Coastguard asked if he could get a lifejacket on. ‘Will do,’ he replied. The transmission lasted 33 seconds.
Retired DI Alastair Davidson, who was on duty at Oban police office that day, told the court: ‘A number of civilian vessels responded to the mayday. People pull together.’
Mr Davidson said Scott’s father, Peter MacAlister, an experienced fisherman, was ‘adamant he knew where the Speedwell was’, but the area where it was eventually located was initially discounted in the search.
The court heard Peter spent weeks trailing a pick to snag his son’s boat on the seabed.
Graeme Bruce, a diver from Seil, had volunteered to help find the Speedwell and Scott’s remains. Mr Bruce said. ‘I knew he had children. He had a wife. I was just making sure we found him for them. ‘There is no insurance claim without a body.’
After three dives found only igneous dykes, which resemble shipwrecks on a magnetometer, an echo sounder revealed ‘very good’ images on June 16. Reading from notes recorded straight after each dive, Mr Bruce said the Speedwell lay 83.3m deep between the isles of Easdale and Insh.
‘I could see the white roof of the wreck,’ he said. ‘It was virtually upright, leaning slightly to the starboard side.’ He saw one of Peter MacAlister’s grapples stuck in the side of the boat.
‘I could see the wheelhouse door was open. The radio mic was dangling. The boat’s life raft was in the valise, on the floor right in front of the door,’ he said. ‘If the painter had been pulled manually, it would have been jettisoned. I did not see any lifejackets. I was looking for somebody in one.’
Mr Bruce said he could not see evidence of a body, such as marine life, in the wheelhouse or on deck, and concluded: ‘I thought [Scott] would not be on the boat.’
Mr Bruce noted the engine-room hatch was missing, but the aft fish room was still covered. Procurator fiscal David Glancy asked: ‘The only breach in the deck as far as you can see is this open hatch?’
Mr Bruce replied: ‘Yes,’ adding he didn’t see any damage to the hull, and knew of no rocks near the surface within 1,000 yards.
Robert Gate, a fisherman from Uig, Skye, who had accompanied Scott MacAlister on the Speedwell, said twice water had filled its aft fish room, which they could only bail with a bucket.
Mr Gates said: ‘The engine room was dry on both occasions. You never got water in there. The engine hatch was always off. A lot of boats do it to let the air in.’
The MacAlister family’s advocate Lewis Kennedy asked Mr Bruce: ‘Was there any damage to the propeller?’
Mr Bruce replied he didn’t look during his 16 minutes at the boat. ‘I planned another dive to have another look,’ he said, but ‘I was told by the owner of the boat he did not want us to dive on the boat any more.’
Mr Bruce said the police tried to stop him diving: ‘[The officer] told me it was potentially a crime scene.’
Mr Bruce said: ‘Police divers are trained to go to a depth of 30m. This was three times that, nearly. The HSE [Health and Safety Executive] would not let them do that.’
Mr Davidson said a commercial diving company had quoted the police costs of £175,000-£200,000 per day, but he sought to discourage the community’s own searches: ‘My own concern was that instead of looking for one missing person we would be looking for two or three.
‘Ultimately it proved Mr [Peter] MacAlister right: that was where the Speedwell was.’
The inquiry continues.