The ship most certainly wrecked in a storm, says David Steel, court president. The investigation overturned versions one by one. First came an assumption of Russians or people of any other country seizing the Gaul. Crew members or third persons were next cleaned of suspicion, just as fire, a blast and drifting ice. A collision with another vessel, in particular, a submarine, to which several television programs were referring, was also ruled out as it would have damaged the trawler far worse than it actually was.
The same fate awaited the most sensational conjecture, of the Gaul spying in the Barents Sea to earn a Soviet submarine's torpedo. Several other hypotheses were also swept aside as implausible, David Steel says in his summing-up paper.
The court thus came at a storm as the only possible shipwreck cause, with a compartment flooded. Supplementary expert studies and computer reconstruction of all options bore out the conclusion, which, however, left the bereaved utterly unconvinced. "I do not believe the explanation we received today," says Beryl Betts, leader of an association that brings together the Gaul crew families. Her brother died in the wreck at the age of 26.
The disaster killed the entire crew of 36. Trawler fragments were recovered as late as 1997. Four sailors' remains were found in the hull in 2002.
With the investigation on, David Steel questioned MI5 and MI6 officers to see whether there really were British agents on the crew, spying on the Soviet Union. The witnesses flatly denied the Gaul collecting intelligence data.
