The search continues for the missing fishing trawler off the Dorset coast
The alarm was raised last night when fishing trawler, Purbeck Isle, disappeared whilst fishing off the Dorset coast and failed to return to port.
The Weymouth all weather lifeboat, Ernest and Mabel, launched at 7:15pm to join the search along with the HM Coastguard helicopters and Royal Navy Warship, HMS York. The inshore lifeboat, Spirit of Loch Fyne, launched at 11pm to search the shoreline.
All lifeboats returned in the early hours of Friday morning to switch crew, and are continuing their search.
Fred Caygill of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, told the BBC news website, “It is a vast search area off Portland within the periphery of Lyme Bay, but that area is expanding.”
Purbeck Isle has previously attracted the attention of the Coastguard when she took on water and the crew were rescued by helicopter off Chesil Beach, west of Portland in 2011.
