Liferaft floats free - eventually - and is found.

Yet another example of how the lives of fishermen are put at risk when the very equipment that is there to protect them fails to function. These days boats like the Ben My Chree are subject to stringent safety regulation and assessments - the equipment they carry on board, like EPIRBs (Emergency Position Indicaiton Radio Beacons) and liferafts are supposed to activate after being submersed. It is just as well the crew of the BMC did not have to rely on their liferaft last Friday should the boat have sunk when they were aboard, on Monday the Sennen lifeboat was alerted and called out to pick up an inflated liferaft - three days after the vessel sank off Carn Base.

Margaretha Maria BM148 - liferaft on sea bed.

In other accidents the outcome has been less favourable; when the Margaretha Maria sank in 1997 south of the Lizard with the loss of all hands, both liferafts failed to activate - one can be seen here on the sea bed next to the hull.

The demise of the Ben My Chree signifies the end of an era in Newlyn. When she arrived in 1978 she was rigged for side trawling. At the time there were a handful of similar private boats and W Stevenson's fleet had four old wooden MFVs and four Sputniks all trawling. The four steel Sputniks were soon converted to beam trawling as the company put all its eggs in that basket. Meanwhile, the fleet of private trawlers grew. In the fifteen years that followed the arrival of the BMC, Newlyn's fleet of trawlers around and above 15m grew and grew.

Until last week, she was the last remaining boat in the port from the days when there was the Pathfinder, Gamrie Bay, Scarlet Thread, Keriolet, Galilean (replaced by the Ocean Harvester), Girl Patricia, Confide, La Critique, Defiant, Wyre Star, Fern, Green Cormorant, Excellent, Jacqueline, Trewarveneth, Anthony Stevenson, Bervie Braes, Sarah Shaun, ABS, Nicola Marie, Three Lads, Rose of Sharon, Lia G, Marina, and several others that came and went!

How times have changed, in today's fleet of Newlyn trawlers over 15m there is.................... the Crystal Sea II!