JMT tragedy: Looking for answers – and an apology

Micky Hill, known across the potting sector as the manufacturer of a wide range of crab, lobster and whelk pots, shares his long struggle to reopen the investigation into the capsize of the scalloper JMT M 99 in July 2015, resulting in the deaths of his son Michael and crewman Shane Hooper. The chain of events that led to the capsize, he says, should never have happened – and must not happen again.

I’m writing this after my annual trip to sit at Rame Head and look over the spot where my son Michael and his colleague Shane Hooper died nine years ago. Shane was 33 when he died, and Michael was 22.

I’ve been fighting since then for some kind of justice, and for changes that will prevent other needless deaths at sea. The fundamental issue that saw my son go to sea in a boat that was certified as safe, but most certainly was not, has never been addressed.

Michael was fishing at the age of 14, whelking as soon as he was able to leave school and work full-time, and well used to weights on deck.

He wanted to go scalloping, and I found what was advertised as the ideal boat for him. The boat, called JMT, was an under- 10m scalloper, and had just passed its MCA survey, then conducted through Seafish.

If I had had an additional independent survey done (this haunts me to this day), it would have been deemed unsafe immediately.

There were complications. The owner of the boat had the licence frozen, as he was under investigation for fishery offences. I took that on the chin, and agreed to a proposal to take the boat and pay later for the licence. I paid a deposit, but the licence issues meant I didn’t get a full bill of sale. I really wanted Michael to be able to celebrate his birthday at sea, doing a job he loved. Two weeks after first seeing the boat, he was fishing, towing four dredges a side.

It was only after the boat was lost, and we were hoping against hope that Michael and Shane were somehow safe, that I learned more about the boat and just how worthless the survey was.

The JMT was registered as under 10m, and the survey had confirmed this. In fact, the vessel had previously been registered in Guernsey as Lady Patricia, at over 11m. When brought back to the UK, it had to be flagged in as Lady Patricia – and then somehow it became under 10m, under a new name, with a new RSS number and PLN, even though no modifications to the hull were made.

After the boat had been brought into the UK, the previous structure was stripped bare and a new superstructure was added, switching the vessel from trawling to scalloping, which the hull was never designed for.

After the boat sank, it transpired that the RSS number of Lady Patricia had been ground out – a fact not picked up in the survey that I had trusted in. Amazingly, the entire identity of the vessel had been changed when leaving Guernsey to come into the UK, to hide the fact that it was not fit to be converted to a scalloper.

Michael Hill.

I was certainly too trusting, and in hindsight, I would have done this so differently. I didn’t find out about the RSS number being ground out until after the vessel was raised by the MAIB. The MAIB worked tirelessly, but its reports didn’t go into the background of why the boat had been certified as safe. It did note, however, that Michael had not been provided with any stability information that might have given its crew some indicators on how to operate the boat safely.

The MCA is there to protect people like Michael and Shane. Its approval on the survey is what made me trust the entire process, and entrust the life of my son and his crew to the vessel at sea.

I had plenty of legal routes to go down, but I was badly advised, and was reeling from the loss of Michael and Shane. I wanted answers and an apology, not financial compensation. I wanted to ensure that no one else went through what our family and Shane’s family went through.

A subsequent review of the case by an independent lawyer discovered some major issues with the investigation, and uncovered potential new evidence which it appears the coroner, MAIB and MCA were all unaware of at the time of the original investigation. Despite requests to review their investigations in light of the new evidence, they declined to do so.

It is inexplicable that the MCA surveyors and RSS did not pick up on the mis-registration and the misclassification of the vessel at the time it was surveyed for entry to the flag.

The JMT was formerly an over-10m trawler, Lady Patricia, when working from Guernsey. By the time Seafish had passed its MCA survey, it had a new RSS number, a new PLN, and was an under-10m scalloper – although no modifications had been made to the hull.

It turns out that the vendor of the boat, Timothy Bowman- Davies, had lost two other vessels, the Seska and the CSK, within a year of JMT sinking, yet the MCA never looked into any of this. We know that the MCA surveyor, who exploited loopholes that have now, thankfully, been closed, was close to Timothy Bowman-Davies.

Timothy Bowman-Davies went to prison after two more deaths on a similar scalloper he was operating in Scarborough. Today, he continues, as far as I can see, to buy and sell boats.

In some ways the reaction of the MCA to this, and other deaths at the hand of this operator, has forced the pace of the new inshore vessel code that has swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. Yet it has never apologised to me. No one has.

At one stage I was under investigation for sending a dangerous boat to sea! However, nothing came of it because I didn’t do any work on the vessel, nor was I aware of all the above.

I don’t expect an apology from a convicted criminal who sold me a death trap, but the refusal of the government bodies, which are in theory there to protect fishermen and maintain safety, to apologise is a source of continuing hurt.

I feel it is in the interest of the public as well as myself to find out where all this went wrong.

This story was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.30 here.

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