Trawler lost radio contact minutes after distress call

AFRENCH trawler that mysteriously sank 14 miles off the Cornish coast lost radio contact a matter of minutes after issuing its first distress call, an inquest into the deaths of the crewmen has heard.

All five Frenchmen on board died when the Bugaled Breizh went down off the Lizard Peninsula on January 15 2004.

An inquest into the deaths of skipper Yves Marie Gloaguen, 45, and Pascal Lucien Le Floch, 49, is being held at the High Court in London following the conclusion of a long-running inquiry in France.

Their bodies were recovered in the hours after the ship sank and taken to the Royal Cornwall Hospital. It means that under English law an inquest must be held here.

The body of a third man, Patrick Gloaguen, 35, was recovered during a salvage but was taken to France, while bodies of Georges Lemetayer, 60, and Eric Guillamet, 42, were never found. As a result, their deaths are not the subject of the inquest, although their families are participating in the process.

On Tuesday, the skipper of the Eridan, a fishing vessel operating just a few miles from the Bugaled Breizh on the day it disappeared, told the court he had received a distress call at about 12.25pm. The court heard that the two vessels had moored at Newlyn Harbour from January 11 to 13 due to stormy weather, but that conditions had been favourable on the day the Bugaled Breizh went down.

Giving evidence via video link and through an interpreter, Serge Cossec said: “The skipper (Yves Marie Gloaguen) said come quickly, we are capsizing. That was all. He said it several times.” Mr Cossec said he had asked him what was happening, but he had only replied: “We are capsizing.”

He added: “(Yves Marie Gloaguen) wasn’t the same as usual – he was wondering what had happened.”

Mr Cossec said he had then left the bridge to tell his own crew to pull up their trawl nets so they could go to the aid of the Bugaled Breizh. When he attempted to make contact a second time on the VHF radio just a few minutes after the first call, there was only crackling on the line, Mr Cossec said.

Federic Stephan, a crewman who was on the bridge of the Eridan at the time of the second VHF call, recalled hearing the sound of rushing water over the radio.

Upon arriving at the Bugaled Breizh’s last known coordinates less than an hour later, the crew of the Eridan found only a large slick of oil spanning 300m to 400m as well as a huge amount of debris from the ship.

They found an empty life raft marked as belonging to the Bugaled Breizh, the court heard, and a second one that was also empty and half deflated.

The question of whether a submarine may have become entangled in the Bugaled Breizh’s trawling gear and caused it to capsize has been raised repeatedly since the trawler sank. But in 2016, France’s top judicial court confirmed the closure of its investigation after finding no evidence to support the theory.

It has also been suggested the Bugaled Breizh may have sunk due to a “soft snag” - when a boat’s trawler nets get caught in mud on the seabed.

From next Monday, the inquest is due to hear evidence on submarine activity in the surrounding waters.