Diver boat owner speaks out
12:39pm Wednesday 21st May 2008
Comments (6)The owner of a dive boat involved in a near miss with a Royal Navy in Falmouth Bay said despite frantic flag waving he thought he was going to be run over.
Sean Beadie, who runs the Cousin Jack, regular takes divers out into the bay on Friday evenings. Last Friday he claims he was nearly run-over by the HMS Enterprise survey vessel and has now reported the incident to the Marine Accident Investigation Board.
"We regularly dive over what is known as the Cannonball site. It is known for giving up the odd cannon ball and divers also collect scallops," he said.
"We take trips into the bay and dive every Friday night. Last Friday we were there and had our flags flying as usual. There was no problem. The Enterprise came out of Falmouth and was some distance from us," he said.
Divers from the Cousin Jack had gone over into the water but the next thing Mr Beadie and his crew realised was the HMS Enterprise was within half a mile of them.
"He was heading straight towards us," he said.
He immediately tried to get hold of the bridge of the vessel via VHF but without success. " I could not get hold of him at all. I called the coastguards. They had been listening and they had visual on us. They know us well. The ship was bearing down and was soon 100 feet away from the side of me. I had a person waving a warning flag at him frantically from the stern. He was doing about four knots. If he had not altered course he would have hit us."
Mr Beadie still had two divers in the water on the seabed at the time. He claimed the naval vessel had gone right over them. On surfacing they asked what had been going on.
It appeared the only way to contact the Enterprise was via a satellite phone, said Mr Beaddie.
Back in port Mr Beadie sought out the commanding officer from the Royal Navy vessel only to be told that the ship had a VHF hand held which was not working properly.
Coastguards at Falmouth confirmed an incident had happened and that an investigation was under way. The Royal Navy has denied there was a problem and said the ship altered course well in time. For further story click here
Your Say YourFalmouth Packet
Neil, Falmouth says...
11:09am Thu 22 May 08
Luckily no-one got hurt, and I can hardly see th point of this being in the local rag!
Neil, Falmouth says...
11:10am Thu 22 May 08
Luckily no-one got hurt, and I can hardly see the point of this being in the local rag!
adam west, thailand says...
2:24pm Thu 22 May 08
Birt, Cornwall says...
9:08pm Thu 22 May 08
adam west wrote:What leads you to say that? I certainly do not understand this to be correct.
\"cannonball site\" its illegal to pick up scallops without a licence,maybe this should be looked into.
get a life, falmouth says...
6:52pm Fri 23 May 08
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subakwa, Nr Truro says...
8:17pm Wed 21 May 08
There were 10 divers, our skipper and a crewman on the rear deck of Cousin Jack who heard the commander admit he had not heard the radio contact efforts due to a fault with his VHF and yet that is now being denied.
To then indicate that we should not have been in water where it is perfectly admissable to dive and we do so regularly is frankly laughable.
This ship was apparently drawing over 5m of water that day and divers were due to be doing stops at 5m just around this time. It is not stretching the truth to say that we were lucky that someone was not seriously injured or killed. An incident in Dover a couple of years ago where a tugboat ran over a diver who was at a similar depth caused broken bones and cuts - imagine the damage a 90m naval vessel and its props would do. This situation would almost certainly have been avoided by the radio contact being returned.