Fatigued Skipper Fell Asleep Before Trawler Grounded And Sank
A prawn trawler ran aground on rocks off the west Highland coast of Scotland after its skipper fell asleep while on watch at night, according to an investigation by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch. The vessel later sank. The crew escaped uninjured, but the sequence is a familiar one in fishing casualties and the report is blunt about what caused it.
The 15-metre Silver Cloud II, which operated out of Ullapool and Gairloch, grounded at 02:38 on rocks at Rubha Rodha near Lochinver last October. Investigators concluded that the skipper had unintentionally fallen asleep because of an acute level of fatigue, made worse by his being ill with flu-like symptoms and by not having taken enough rest before the voyage.
The crew were below deck and were woken by the impact along with the skipper. On investigating, they found around a metre of rising water in one of the holds. The skipper decided to abandon the vessel, and the crew put on lifejackets before leaving her. Investigators noted that the crew were well drilled for potential accidents, and that preparation is visible in the outcome: a rapid, orderly evacuation from a vessel taking water in darkness, with nobody hurt.
Single-handed night watchkeeping is the underlying exposure. On small fishing vessels the skipper frequently takes the passage alone while the crew rest, which means one person's alertness is the only barrier between the vessel and the shore. Watch alarms exist to catch exactly this failure, and their presence, setting and use is a standard line of inquiry in groundings of this kind, because a device that is fitted but switched off provides no protection at all.
Fatigue in the fishing industry is structural rather than incidental. Trip length, weather windows, market timing and crew numbers combine to compress rest, and a skipper who is also the owner has a direct financial incentive to sail rather than wait. Illness compounds it, and the combination described in this report is one investigators have documented repeatedly across the fleet. The value of a finding like this lies less in the individual case than in what it says about a working pattern that leaves too little margin for a skipper who is simply unwell.
