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The Chain Nobody Checked: What the Death of Leigh Spencer on Cornishman Tells Every Fishing Vessel Skipper About Lifting Equipment

🕑 5 min read words Safety • Incident

Vessel: Cornishman, beam trawler
Date & location: 6 February 2021, 44nm south of the Isles of Scilly
Outcome: Deckhand Leigh Spencer killed instantly when the port trawl beam fell after its quick-release chain fractured
Human factors: Normalisation · Absent Competence · Ignored Near-Miss
Source: MAIB Report 8/2025

9 decision nodes4 outcome paths — secured / unsecured load~7 min read + Knowledge Checker

44 Miles South of the Isles of Scilly — 6 February 2021

During routine net hauling, a deckhand noticed a missing shackle on the chain mat and was told to replace it — a routine repair. The port derrick raised the trawl beam roughly 3–3.5 metres to hold it taut alongside. Leigh Spencer stood beneath it to make the repair. At about 0630, without warning, the quick-release chain fractured. The beam fell. He was killed instantly.

What the Chain Was Never Suited For

The 32mm Grade 8 steel chain had been fitted 10 months earlier. HSE guidance published seven years before the accident had explicitly warned against using Grade 8 chain in corrosive marine environments, recommending lower-tensile Grade 4 instead. It was used anyway. DNV testing after the accident found the intact starboard chain — still in service — had a breaking load of just 17% of the required minimum. Wear had also ground down the pin the chain ran over, concentrating bending stress at exactly the point where the fracture occurred, and the chain's hardness had risen into the range where hydrogen embrittlement from salt water becomes likely.

Recommended Actions

Replace chain-over-pin quick-release arrangements with a sheave-based system, or confirm chain grade is corrosion-appropriate before fitting
Ensure LOLER-competent persons genuinely understand chain failure mechanisms, not just hold a maritime certificate
Act on near-misses across a fleet — a cracked link found on a sister vessel is a fleet-wide warning, not an isolated event
MCA surveyors to receive lifting-gear-specific training and lower derricks during survey to inspect chain and pin directly

Human Element Analysis

Normalisation

Working beneath a suspended trawl beam had become routine, despite the Fishermen's Safety Guide and the vessel's own risk assessment both requiring crew to stand clear. The written rule had been quietly displaced by the daily routine.

Absent Competence

The skipper was designated the LOLER competent person, as permitted by guidance — but possessing a certificate of competency does not automatically confer the specialist knowledge to detect corrosion, cracking, or a dangerously reduced pin diameter. No one on board could see the failure developing.

Ignored Near-Miss

A cracked link was found in the same quick-release arrangement on a sister vessel six years earlier. It was reported to the supplier but never analysed, and no fleet-wide change followed. The warning existed. It changed nothing.

How This Pattern Repeats

Industry	Incident	The parallel
Aviation	Aloha Airlines Flight 243, 1988	Metal fatigue invisible to routine inspection, in a component whose failure mode wasn't understood by those inspecting it, until it failed catastrophically.
Space	Challenger disaster, 1986	A known material limitation (O-ring cold tolerance; here, chain grade in a corrosive environment) documented in advance, and used anyway.
Rail	Hatfield rail crash, 2000	A previously identified defect (gauge corner cracking; here, a cracked chain link on a sister vessel) that was noted but not acted on fleet-wide before it caused a fatality.

See How You'd Handle It

The scenario opens with a missing shackle spotted during hauling, and the beam held aloft for the repair. What you check before anyone works beneath it is the first decision point.

What Every Skipper and Deckhand Should Take From This

Never work beneath a suspended load unless it is independently secured from above
Confirm chain grade is suitable for a corrosive offshore environment before it's fitted, not after
A near-miss on a sister vessel is a fleet-wide warning — treat it as one
A maritime certificate does not automatically qualify someone to detect lifting-gear failure mechanisms — get a genuinely competent inspection

Test Your Knowledge

Think you've got this covered? Put it to the test in Crew Connect's free Knowledge Checker — try a quick safety round and see how you score. Or try the full branching Decision Simulator scenario built from this investigation — work through the real decision points and see which ending you reach.