Nag (ship)
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The stern trawler Gaul was a fishing factory ship with the home port Kingston upon Hull and the fishing license plate "H.243". The ship sank in 1974 in the Barents Sea north of Norway .
history
The stern trawler was built in 1972 under the hull number 375 at the Brooke Marine shipyard in Lowestoft for the Ranger Fishing Company in North Shields and launched as Ranger Castor with the fishing license plate "SN.18". It was the fourth and last ship in a series that had been built for the Ranger Fishing Company at the shipyard. The ship was delivered on August 3, 1972.
In October 1973 the ship was sold to British United Trawlers in Hull and handed over in December. By then the ship had made five fishing trips. The ship was renamed Gaul by British United Trawlers . It got the fishing license "H.243".
On January 22, 1974 the horse ran from Hull on a fishing trip to Norway. She reached her target area on January 29th.
Sinking of the ship
On the night of February 8th to 9th, 1974, the ship sank in a storm in the Barents Sea. There was no distress signal and the loss of the ship was not known until a month later. Despite a thorough search, the ship was not found. It was not until May 1974 that the Norwegian whaler Rover found a lifebuoy of the trawler about 75 nautical miles southeast of the later site of the wreck of the Gaul . The entire crew was killed when the ship went down. It consisted of 36 people.
Investigations and processing of the sinking
An inquiry came in 1974 to the conclusion that the Gaul probably by a series of huge waves in rough seas capsized . Defects in the maintenance of the doors and hatches of the discharge chutes (“duff chute”, “offal chute”, i.e. discharge chutes for offal and bycatch) were known of the sister ship Kelt , which was fishing in the same sea area at the time of the accident. The relevance of these deficiencies for the demise of the horse was downplayed.
In 1975, the Norwegian trawler Rairo reported that its fishing gear was lost on November 15 of that year after it got stuck on an undersea obstruction near the Gaul's suspected sinking site . The British Government decided against a search based on this information in 1977, although it did not rule out that the obstacle was the horse . The reasons for this decision were cost reasons and the lack of prospect of an improvement in shipping.
In 1997 the wreck of the Gaul was found by an expedition financed by the British television station Anglia Television and the Norwegian television station NRK at the same location ( 72 ° 4 ′ N , 25 ° 5 ′ E, ), at which the Rairo had reported an underwater obstacle . The wreck was inclined about 35 ° to starboard at a depth of 280 meters . A documentary was shot about the expedition and was first broadcast on Channel 4 on November 6, 1997 as part of the Dispatches series.
From 1998 to 2002, at the instigation of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) of the UK Department of Transport carried out extensive investigations into the wreck. These investigations eliminated any suspicion that the ship had been hijacked by the Russians.
The examination of the wreck revealed that several hatches and doors were open on the horse . In particular, the outer non-return flaps and the inner hatches of the discharge chutes were open to the innards and by-catches. The rudder was at full port. John Prescott decided on the basis of these findings that a new investigation was warranted. This was the Re-opened Formal Investigation (RFI) 2004.
On December 17, 2004, the RFI concluded that the open doors and hatches had compromised the water-tightness of the ship. In combination with the heavy swell, this led to flooding of around 100 tons of water on the factory deck. The RFI also concluded that an attempted emergency maneuver had caused the horse a catastrophic loss of stability and ultimately capsized. Further water ingress then took place through the open bulkheads and hatches until the horse lost its buoyancy and sank very quickly.
The RFI also concluded that the Gaul was not a spy ship. Her trawl was not caught in any submarine cable and she hadn't collided with any submarine.
Trivia
Members of the crew of the Gaul refused to accept the results of the first investigation. The 18-month-old horse was one of the most modern ships in the British fishing fleet. In 1975 it was claimed on television that the Gaul was sunk because it was also a spy ship. There were other speculations about the sinking of the horse :
- It was brought up by the Soviet Union because it was a spy ship.
- She was sunk by a Soviet submarine because she was active in espionage.
- She collided with a submarine.
- She overturned after her trawl net got caught in secret submarine cables ( SOSUS cables).
Technical data and equipment
The ship was one of sixteen cylinders - diesel engine of English Electric Ruston Paxman (type: 16 RK3M) with a power of 1,939 kW driven. The motor worked via a reduction gear on a propeller fitted with a Kort nozzle .
A wave generator and two diesel generators provided power on board . The output of the wave generator was sufficient for the power supply at sea.
literature
- John Nicklin: The Loss of the Motor Trawler GAUL , Hutton Press, Beverley 1998, ISBN 1-872167-94-2
Web links
- Official website request (RFI)
- Report on the Underwater Survey of the Stern Trawler GAUL H. 243 and the supporting Model Experiments, August 1998 - January 1999 , Marine Accident Report No. 4/99, Marine Accident Investigation Branch , April 1999 (PDF file, 804 kB)
- Website claims conspiracy to remain silent about an alleged design flaw
Footnotes
- ↑ The documentary film Dispatches - Secrets of the Gaul can be seen in six parts on YouTube ( playlist ).
- ↑ Meeting of the House of Commons on November 25, 1997 at Hansard (English)
- ↑ Lucy Thornton: Gaul mystery solved at last? British trawler's crew 'discovered in cave' after vanishing 39 years ago in The Mirror , December 12, 2013 (English)
- ↑ Gaul trawler 'not sunk by Soviets' at Associated Newspapers / Daily Mail , accessed on February 23, 2014 (English)