Mysterious loss of the trawler Pescado

On 5^th March 1991 the Coastguard station at Falmouth received a report that a locally based fishing vessel called Pescado had failed to return to port with her six crew. She had sailed on 25^th February and had been expected to go anywhere off the south-west coast and possibly into the Irish Sea, but with no exact location and no radio response for three days, people were starting to get worried.

A search and rescue operation was launched and this was continued for several days until wreckage was located on 7^th March that was confirmed to belong to the missing trawler, there was no sign of her crew and no indication of what had happened to them.

The Pescado started her life as a side trawler when she was built in Holland in 1956. At 72 feet long and just under 56 gross tons, she went through a variety of owners in her lifetime and had run aground in 1981 where she was declared a constructive total loss. The wreck was bought and repaired but it would be several years before she was fit for sea and once again working as a fishing vessel.

A company known as Guideday Ltd found Pescado for sale in 1990 where she had laid in Plymouth without an engine for 18 months and once again the vessel was restored back to working order and was later fitted out as a scallop dredger. Various trials were conducted but she had a lot of defective parts and several incidents caused concern for those that knew the trawler by now.

The day after the wreckage was found and it was confirmed that it belonged to the Pescado, a body of one of the crew members was located. As more wreckage was found over the next few weeks a sea-angling vessel reported that they had located a wreck on the seabed 13 miles south of Dodman Point, a team from the Marine Accidents Investigation Branch launched an expedition and confirmed that the wreck was that of the missing trawler.

After another body was found it became apparent that there were no survivors and the reasoning behind the sinking was very much a mystery. The cause had to be found and so, over two years after the sinking, an operation was put in place to salvage the wreck. On 20^th September 1993 the Pescado finally broke the surface, covered in rust and looking battered after spending so long on the seabed. The wreck was taken to Devonport dockyard and placed in a dry dock for inspections.

At this point the owner Alan Ayres and managing agent Joseph O’Connor were now throwing the accusations that the Royal Navy had sunk the Pescado during one of their many exercises that they do off the Plymouth coast. Whether it was a submarine that had snagged the nets (which had happened before in 1990 with the Antares being dragged under by HMS Trenchant) or that a collision with another ship had suddenly sent her to the bottom.

When the wreck was examined the fishing equipment showed no sign of damage that a submarine would have caused by snagging, nor did the wreck itself show any sign of collision damage from either a surface or sub-surface object. Instead the investigation began to focus on the safety of the trawler itself and for the owners it was not looking good.

The two men were put on trial accused of the manslaughter of her crew and breaches of safety, however the judge ordered a not guilty verdict. A further charge was found guilty but then later overturned. In the meantime the MAIB did a full investigation and their final report in 1998 stated the loss of the Pescado as having her nets snagging on the seabed which dragged her down. They highlighted the safety shortcomings, the instability of the vessel, inexperience of the crew, no emergency beacon and a liferaft that was strapped down so that it couldn’t float free when the vessel sank.

Despite the evidence, Ayres insists that the Pescado was sunk by the military and that the Royal Navy initiated a cover up. The fact that all the warships and submarines were accounted for elsewhere was rejected by him and he continues to attempt to overturn the reasons for the loss of the Pescado and her six crew and direct the blame away from himself. With no evidence to say that she was ever even involved in a collision of any kind, the sinking of Pescado remains a tragic accident and one that should be taken as a valuable lesson for any owners or operators who try and cut corners with safety at sea.