12:39pm Wednesday 21st May 2008
By Stephen Ivall
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
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