The "harsh working conditions" of three fishermen have been revealed in an investigation.
Carl McGrath, 34, Ross Ballantine, 39, and Alan Minard, 20, were on board the Nicola Faith when it left Conwy Harbour on January 27, 2021. It capsized and sank 1.9 miles north of Rhos-on-Sea.
The body of 39-year-old Ross Ballantine, of Conwy, was found on March 12, on West Kirby beach. The day after on March 13, the body of Carl McGrath, of Conwy, was discovered at the South Promenade in Blackpool and And on March 14, the body of Alan Minard, of Penmaenmawr, was found at The Groyne on Meols Promenade, reports North Wales Live.
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Commercial sea fishing has long been a harsh occupation and life on the Nicola Faith was no different. A report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) found skipper Carl McGrath pushed his crew harder than most in search of greater productivity.
Aged 34, Mr McGrath had been the boat’s skipper for some three years. Previously a builder and steel fabricator, he had had no fishing experience prior to skippering the Nicola Faith.
Despite this, he had completed all mandatory fishing industry safety training courses. In addition, he’d also undertaken extra non-compulsory training, including a course in vessel stability.
Neither had Ross Ballantine, 39, any prior experience of fishing before taking a job on the Nicola Faith, on which he had been working for about eight months. The youngest crew member was Alan Minard, 20, who had been crewing on Nicola Faith for just two weeks. Before joining Nicola Faith he had been working as an engineering apprentice at a boatyard in Devon, but was laid off because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
On deck, the crew worked hard and in cramped conditions, according to a report by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB). It noted that life was tough and crew members often came and went.
MAIB investigators said: “Nicola Faith experienced a high crew turnover in the two years before the accident, many crew members left after only a few days due to the harsh working conditions on board.
“All crew were paid a fixed rate for each day’s work and none were issued with a contract of employment. The pace of work demanded by the skipper of Nicola Faith left one former crew member with permanent nerve damage in his shoulder.”
Toughest of jobs
Mr McGrath owned 25 strings of pots, all of which were in use on the day of the accident. Each string was about 180m in length, made from 14mm leaded line, with 60 pots attached at regular intervals.
The pots were handmade from recycled 25-litre plastic chemical drums, weighing 5kg each – two-thirds lighter than commercially available alternatives. They contained a metal bar to weigh them down.
A hydraulic hauler was used by the skipper to pull in the back line. The pots were passed to a second crew member who emptied their contents onto a riddle to sift out undersized whelks and detritus.
Fully-grown whelks were washed, loaded into net bags and stacked on deck, each weighing about 38kg. The average yield from a string of pots was five bags of whelks, rising to seven bags when the fishing was good.
The third crew member would then wash the pots and rebait them with dogfish and crab. On a good day, the crew of three could haul, process, rebait and shoot eight strings a day – more if yields were lower.
MAIB investigators concluded that, in the search for efficiency, Mr McGrath operated the vessel in an “unsafe manner”. On the day of the accident it had been overloaded “to the point of instability”, causing it to capsize with the loss of three lives. Actions that compromised the vessel’s safety included:
- Developing and making lighter pots that could be emptied, rebaited and shot quicker than commercially available pots. This allowed the vessel to be loaded more heavily, more frequently.
- Insisting that the crew worked harder and faster using the lighter pots, which increased the physical demands on them and resulted in one crew member leaving the vessel with permanent nerve damage in his shoulder.
- Adding a larger cat catcher to store more bags of catch, one of the modifications that eroded the vessel’s stability.
- Electing to relocate multiple strings of pots at the same time as carrying a full day’s catch.
The two crew members had not received basic sea safety training. Nor were they equipped with Personal Flotation Device or personal locator beacons. Locating the sunken vessel was difficult as it lacked a mandatory emergency beacon.
The MAIB report concluded: “The local training centre at Rhos-on-Sea was closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic; however, training was available in other parts of the country throughout this period.
“Attendance at these free basic training courses would have increased their awareness of the hazards and dangers they faced and exposed them to industry best practice, which may then have led them to challenge many of the normalised unsafe practices on board Nicola Faith.”
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