Minister refuses father’s plea to raise wreck of fishing boat

THE FATHER of a fisherman missing after his boat sank off Easdale five years ago has called on the Scottish Government to help raise the wreck and recover his body, as it did for the families of two crewmen lost aboard the Nancy Glen.

However, the minister has so far refused.

Skipper Scott MacAlister, a 40-year-old father-of-three living on the isle of Luing, was collecting prawns alone in the Firth of Lorn on April 25, 2013, when the MFV Speedwell foundered south of Insh Island, where it remains 83m below the surface. His body has never been found.

Earlier this year, a fatal accident inquiry (FAI) at Oban Sheriff Court adjourned for the third time until June 4 for the MacAlisters’ advocate to exhaust ‘new lines of inquiry’. The Speedwell’s previous owner, John Connell, also consented to the vessel being recovered.

Now, a month before the FAI, Scott MacAlister’s father Peter is appealing to fisheries secretary Fergus Ewing MSP to extend the same ‘common decency’ to his family, as he did to the families of the Nancy Glen’s missing crew Duncan MacDougall and Przemek Krawczyk.

After the Marine Accident Investigation Board (MAIB) gathered enough evidence to conclude its report without raising the Nancy Glen 140m deep in Loch Fyne, the Scottish Government funded a salvage operation to try to retrieve the bodies.

Justifying that decision, Mr Ewing said: ‘In these tragic and extremely exceptional circumstances, with the Nancy Glen having been lost within sight of the family homes and the wider community, it is only right the Scottish Government intervenes and works with the families and salvage experts to search the vessel.’

Two bodies were recovered last month and identified as the missing men.

Peter MacAlister said: ‘We are so glad the Tarbert families got something out of it, but we want the same common decency. Why not us? There’s no more surety that these men were on the boat than Scott was on the boat. He would not have got out. If Scott had got out the boat, even without a lifejacket, we would have found him on the surface.

‘The Nancy Glen was outside the harbour where the families could see it. Scott’s grandfather lives on Easdale.

‘His brother is fishing in the area and it’s there all the time. I am looking straight out to where the boat sank.

‘It has been on the same spot for five years.’

Mr MacAlister wants to raise the Speedwell, he explained, ‘in the hope Scott is there and we get him and prove why the boat sank and what condition it was in. It should be done before the FAI, then the boat can get tested. The point of the FAI is to find out why the boat sank.’

Mr Ewing replied that the evidence available to the FAI includes ‘the condition of the MFV Speedwell, visual inspection observations of the wreck site from an independent diver, who is cited as a witness, and separate film footage from a Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicle.

‘It is not considered necessary to recover the vessel for evidentiary purposes in respect of conducting the FAI, however, I understand the enquiry can consider recovery if it becomes apparent it would help the investigation.

‘The MAIB earlier determined it was not necessary to raise the vessel from the seabed to establish the likely cause of its loss.

‘It would also appear, from the assessment of the available evidence thus far, that it is generally considered unlikely Scott MacAlister’s body remains on the vessel following its sinking on April 25, 2013.

‘While fully empathising with the family’s need for closure, and Peter MacAlister’s understandable wish, as a father, to raise the MV Speedwell, it is not possible for the Scottish Government to intervene in every case where the sinking of a fishing vessel has resulted in the loss of life at sea.’