Trawler skipper’s body found

Press, 15 July 1983, Page 3

Trawler skipper’s body found

NZPA Sydney A trawler skipper, Bill Muir, roped himself to floating wreckage from his sunken vessel off the New South Wales south coast in a vain bid to survive freezing seas, the police believe.

“Mr Muir had lashed his arm to a floating cabin hatch, but it seems likely he lost consciousness and froze to death,” said a policeman at Eden, New South Wales, yesterday.

The Eden-based trawler Annteak went missing in stormy seas eight days ago. The sighting of flotsam off the coast on Wednesday was the first concrete indication

that it had sunk. Late on Wednesday the body of Mr Muir, aged 55, was found roped to a wooden door floating three miles off Merimbula. The recovery was made by one of the many search vessels, the trawler Belah.

Still missing from the sunken trawler are Mr Muir’s son William, aged 24, and a crewman, Tim Moorehouse, aged 41, all of Eden.

The three men are expatriate New Zealanders. The Eden police spokesman said the two older men came to Australia about three years ago and William Muir arrived about three months ago.

“Mr Muir obviously made a brave attempt to remain alive by roping an arm to the hatch,” the police spokesman said. “But you wouldn’t be able to survive in these cold waters much more than an hour.” A scaled-down search for the two missing men continued yesterday with beach surveillance, sea searches, and aerial reconnaissance by the Sydney-based Polair Two police helicopter.

But the search was later called off for the second time. The Sydney Water Police said local trawlers would keep a lookout for the bodies but the search had been officially closed.