A Panamanian flagged general cargo ship 'Captain Nicholas M' has been detained in Fowey, Cornwall after Maritime & Coastguard Agency Surveyors found numerous deficiencies on board the 3,000 gross ton ship.

After an initial inspection on board, a 10 page list of deficiencies was compiled including: Various alarms not working or removed; Food in the provision room crawling with bugs; Rudder angle indicators not working despite having been notified to the vessels Master in Spain earlier in the year; Fire hose couplings split or cracked; Fire plan inaccurate; Emergency escape trunk doors not sealing; Most navigational charts on board not corrected; VHF Digital Selective Calling (DSC) on both port and starboard side not working.

Captain Chris Moss from the Falmouth Marine Office said, "This is a particularly poor ship. Crucially the officers and crew of the vessel lack adequate knowledge of emergency drills and signals particularly fire drill techniques which could have tragic consequences if a fire broke out whilst the ship was at sea. The emergency muster lists for the crew do not even relate to this ship".

"Poor maintenance was also evident. Various items were either broken, not working or in the case of safety plans for rafts and lifeboats simply not applicable for this vessel! The Master has been given a complete list of the deficiencies so far identified. Although the serious defects are not attributable to the classification society, Bureau Veritas, they have nevertheless been brought in to further investigate additional faults.

Our own Surveyors called a halt to the inspection when we reached the tenth page of deficiencies and all of those faults identified as `detainable' will need to be corrected before we allow her to set sail again."