Incorrectly installed life-raft caused fishermen's deaths

An accident report says three fishermen died when their vessel sank, because their incorrectly stowed life-raft failed to float free and automatically inflate.

The three men had set off from Weymouth on the wooden potting 'Purbeck Isle' vessel when it foundered nine miles off Portland Bill in May last year.

Had the liferaft floated free and inflated it was "entirely possible" that the fishing boat's skipper David McFarlane, 35, and his crewmen, Jack Craig, 21, and Robert Prowse, 20, would have been saved, the report said.