Struan Coupar, of Bowden, Yealmpton, writes:

The Dartmouth harbour ­master has circulated a news­letter describing the incident involving the French trawler that capsized and sank alongside the south embankment and which is still there as I write some three weeks later after being refloated.

In the newsletter he said that, ‘for some reason’, it did not right itself when the tide came back in.

That is hardly surprising. Unless the hull could have been made watertight, downflooding into the interior of the vessel would have been almost inevitable. But one wonders what steps were taken to counteract the ingress when it began.

My understanding is that the local fire service was in ­attendance, and if that is so it would have had heavy-duty pumps available. Were these deployed? If not, why not?

I ask because intervention at that stage could possibly have averted the problem.

The sail training organisation of which I am chairman faced a very similar situation some 15 years ago in Brixham, when one of our sailing trawlers, Leader, which was about the same size as the St Christophe, but a wooden vessel built on the Dart in 1892, capsized due to an unfortunate error on the part of a member of our sea staff.

The harbour master arranged for the fire service to be contacted and by the time the tide turned it was in attendance.

The service’s pumps dealt with the problem without ­difficulty and the vessel righted herself without the need of any other assistance.