Mother calls for shipwreck inquiry

Significant shorts

A police decision to dispose of the scalloper Pescado, the vessel at the centre of a manslaughter trial after it sank with the loss of six crew more than six years ago, was criticised yesterday.

The Devon and Cornwall force has spent pounds 1,000 a month storing the 100- tonne craft in Devonport dockyard, Plymouth, since it was raised from the seabed in September 1993, as part of a pounds 500,000 police inquiry into the tragedy. But Rita Capon, from Durham, whose 23-year-old daughter, Jo-Ann Thomas, was the cook aboard the vessel, said yesterday she wanted a public inquiry into the sinking, and that the Pescado should be preserved as evidence. The crew died when the Plymouth registered vessel sank in 240 feet of water after sailing from Falmouth in February 1991.