The official enquiry into the circumstances of the loss of the engineer of the Banff steam drifter BF 188 Mistletoe, which was wrecked at Yarmouth on Saturday, has been held at the Custom House at Yarmouth by Mr. M.A. Leavey, receiver of wrecks & the owner of the ill-fated boat, Mr. George Flett of Findochty was present.
The skipper, Alexander Flett, said that he was returning from the fishing grounds & was taking the harbour on the ebb-tide, when his vessel grounded aft, when she was in mid - channel. She immediately swung to & was struck by a succession of seas that filled the fish hold & forced her bows under. All of the crew of nine hands ran aft, & as the deck was underwater, took to the mizzen mast & rigging. There were many men on the North pier who immediately threw out ropes with buoys attached, by means of which some of the crew were saved, while the Coastguards fired a line which was secured to the mast. Two more were taken ashore in the breeches buoy, but before eight of them had been saved there had been a series of perilous escapes.
Three of them were washed away, each of whom succeeded in catching hold of a buoy or rope, by which they were hauled ashore, but the engineer, John Duke, was less fortunate. He was carried away from the vessel & at first got hold of a spar, but on drifting among some buoys & nets, he let go the spar & hung onto the buoys for a time, until he appeared to get entangled amongst the nets & ropes & sank after struggling for twenty minutes. The skipper himself had been swept overboard by a sea, from the small boat into which he had crawled for refuge.