Three drowned when liferaft failed to float
Three fishermen died because their incorrectly stowed liferaft failed to float free and automatically inflate when their vessel sank, an accident report has said.
Had the liferaft inflated it was “entirely possible” that skipper David McFarlane, 35, and crewmen, Jack Craig, 21, and Robert Prowse, 20, would have been saved, the report said.
The three had set off from Weymouth in Dorset on the wooden potting vessel Purbeck Isle when the heavily-loaded boat foundered nine miles off Portland Bill in Dorset on May 17 last year.
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Hide AdA Marine Accident Investigation Branch report said the boat went down so quickly that the men were unable to collect their lifejackets. The unit securing the liferaft in its cradle activated as designed, but the raft failed to float free because it had been incorrectly stowed.