Tag Archives: Outer Hebrides
F/V Louisa: Fishermen drowned because of faulty gas cylinder used for life raft
Three men who drowned at sea after their fishing boat sank during the night would “almost certainly” have survived if a gas cylinder used to inflate their life raft had been properly maintained, a sheriff has concluded. Sheriff Principal Derek Pyle says “dysfunctional” working practices at maintenance firm Thameside Fire Protection meant a CO2 cylinder on board the Louisa had been misleadingly labelled as full when it was empty. “It is also beyond doubt that the reason the liferaft did not inflate was because the CO2 cylinder did not work.” >click to read< 14:15
Tragic sinking of F/V Louisa was an ‘unusual and exceptional’ event
Martin Johnstone, 29, Chris Morrison, 27, and skipper Paul Alliston, 42, were asleep when the creel vessel Louisa began taking on water while at anchor near Mingulay, off the Outer Hebrides, on April 9 2016. An inquiry before Sheriff Derek Pyle, at Lochmaddy Sheriff Court in North Uist, has been told how what happened to the stricken Stornoway-registered vessel was “a very unusual and exceptional event”. It heard how the vessel sank by the bow and foundered, probably due to flooding of the hold, with the exhausted crew all in their accommodation and asleep when the incident occurred. >click to read< 12:25
