Deadly blast
“A Marine officer was killed yesterday when the trawler he was inspecting blew up in Aberdeen,” reported the South China Morning Post on April 7, 1977. “And last night two of the three Marine assistants accompanying him were still missing. Ten people were hurt – five from one family – in the blast […] only yards from the Jumbo floating restaurant at about 4.10 pm.”
The next day, the Post reported that a “Marine Department Team has been set up to investigate […] A Marine officer, Mr Thomas Davidson (59), and a Marine assistant, Mr Wong Wai-shing (24), were killed in the blast. Another Marine officer, Mr Lee Wing-tak (21), is missing.
“Mr Wong’s body was found in the trawler’s hold by Fire Services divers yesterday. The search for Mr Lee will continue today. Nine of the 10 people injured are still in Queen Mary Hospital.”
On April 29, the Post reported that the “Marine Department’s team set up to investigate the cause of the Aberdeen trawler explosion is trying to establish whether LP gas containers stored in its hold had caused the blast.
“The team has found an LP gas container in the trawler’s wreck and believes that several more might have been thrown onto the seabed by the explosion.”
It only took until August 8 for a “verdict of accidental death [to be] yesterday returned by a coroner’s jury probing the death of three Marine Department officers killed,” reported the Post.
“The three-man jury added a rider that LP gas suppliers should ‘advertise’ to consumers that caps be used to cover up the valves of gas cylinders when they are not being used. It also endorsed the opinion […] that the explosion was caused by a spark from the trawler’s engine igniting some liquefied petroleum gas present in the engine room.”