No need for secrecy on the open seas

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jan 30, 2000

BEING a seafaring nation, our history is littered with the tragic loss of men who have gone down to sea in ships. An island race surrounded by frequently cruel seas, we understand only too well the fragility of a ship pitched against the elements and when one is sunk and its crew lost, we are all touched by the tragedy.

Nineteen days ago, the scallop dredging boat Solway Harvester foundered in the Irish Sea taking its seven-man crew with it. For the fishing community of Kirkcudbright and Whithorn it was not only a dreadful tragedy but it was also surrounded in mystery. The skipper was experienced and had faced worse seas before and so sudden was the calamity which overwhelmed him that he was unable to send out a mayday call.

Confronted by unimaginable grief it not surprising that the community has struggled to find a reason for what seems to be the inexplicable loss of a modern boat captained by an experienced fisherman. They have also turned to darker thoughts and, faced by a lack of reliable information, they refuse to believe that the elements alone were to blame.

Inevitably, the focus of their attention turned to the Royal Navy, for its submarines have been involved in earlier incidents with fishing boats. Worse, when the Antares was sunk by a hunter-killer submarine in 1990, the Royal Navy attempted to cover up the incident by denying that its boat was involved and were slow to admit blame. Never mind that they are fellow seafarers, the navy is treated with suspicion by the fishing community and the presence of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Bayleaf in the area was seen as proof that the military was somehow involved. Those fears were fuelled by wild newspaper reports that HMS Vigilant, a Trident boat, collided with the Solway Harvester.

Although the story was groundless - the submarine was too large to be operating in the area of the sinking - the suspicions remained simply because the navy has always denied that its submarines have snagged nets or had close encounters with fishing vessels. But it was not quite the end of the story. When a Kirkcudbright fishing boat dredged up 30 metres of optic cable used in the operation of remote controlled mine disposal vehicles, mistrust once again fell on the Royal Navy. Perhaps one of these had broken loose and smashed into the side of the Solway Harvester, causing it to sink? After pieces of the cable came into the possession of the Sunday Herald, our reporters carried out their own thorough investigation and eventually the Royal Navy admitted that the cable came from one of its minehunters which was assisting in the survey of the sunken fishing boat. They remain adamant that none of their vessels were in the area when the Solway Harvester went down and that they are mystified by mischievous reports which suggest otherwise.

That seems to settle the issue, at least as far as the Royal Navy is concerned, but the issue goes beyond its denials. At the heart of the matter is a deep-seated suspicion between the fishing community on the one hand and officialdom as represented not only by the Royal Navy but also by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch.

Indeed, in most fishermen's minds they are one and the same thing and they believe that the MAIB will do everything in its power to cover up for the Royal Navy. Here their suspicions will be fuelled by misleading statements about the damage to the fishing boat's hull and by the flood of contradictory theories which appear to originate from the MAIB. These range from the wall of water theory to the apparent hoax, made to this paper, that a mine might also have been involved.

None of this speculation has helped the families of the crew of the Solway Harvester to come to terms with their grief. In fact, it has only compounded it. While they recognise that tragedy is an ever- present companion on the sea, it is only right that their questions should be answered as fully as is possible under the circumstances. They should not be fobbed off with a diet of misleading statements and official denials. The MAIB was wrong to create a climate of suspicion and the Royal Navy could have acted more quickly to quash the rumours that it had any involvement in the incident. That it has done so now is to its credit, but there is still much work to be done in healing the wounds which were created by the sinking of the Antares and by too many other incidents involving British and Irish fishing boats.

By all means, the Royal Navy has to protect the operational effectiveness of its fleet, but it must remember too that the fishermen who use the same waters are friends and not a potential enemy. Immediately publicising the plotted positions of all its submarines at the time of any sinking incident would be a small step in building a new climate of trust. Information from the MAIB should be public and updated as the inquiry progresses to counter the suspicion that the investigators have anything to hide.

It is now too late to save the crew of the Solway Harvester but the next time a fishing boat goes down - as one surely will, for the sea is unforgiving - there must be no repetition of the muddle, delays and obfuscation which have added to the distress of a grieving community.