Coroner to finally deem young fisherman dead after 30 years

A young fisherman will finally be declared dead some 30 years after he was lost at sea, as more chilling details are heard about the last time a cray fisherman saw his deckhand.

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THE year was 1990 when fisherman Christopher Short woke on the rocks of the rugged West Coast after blacking out and being washed ashore.

He couldn’t feel his right leg, but worse, he couldn’t see his young deckhand – Jeffrey Donald Crowden – who had waited with their dinghy after conditions had suddenly turned extreme.

Mr Short, then 36, didn’t waste any time. He crawled to where their main vessel Storm Along was anchored, using his hands to pull himself out of the water.

He started Storm Along’s engine and began pulling the anchor, issuing a Mayday alert and calling on help from another fishing boat about half a mile away.

Mr Short joined police and search and rescue teams to find the 22-year-old, combing the area near Point Hibbs for three days and two nights.

The dinghy was found as Mr Short was returning to Strahan, ordered by police to stop searching.

Mr Crowden was never seen again.

On Friday, 30 years after he was lost at sea, an inquest into Mr Crowden’s disappearance and presumed death was held at the Hobart Coroners Court.

He will soon be officially recorded as deceased, following an administrative oversight that has led to decades of delay.

An inquest was first held into the matter in 1991, but the findings were overturned shortly afterwards by the Supreme Court of Tasmania for legal reasons.

Mr Crowden’s parents, who are now in their 80s, were present in court on Friday, with Coroner Simon Cooper apologising for the oversight.

Mr Short gave evidence by video link, tearfully telling the Crowdens that “you never forget”.

“I just want to offer my condolences to both of them,” he said.

Mr Short said Mr Crowden had worked for him for about five years and were “together most of the year”, describing him as a “very competent deckhand” who loved fishing and being aboard the boat.

The pair had been retrieving cray pots on the day in question near Low Rocky Point when a wave broke around the dinghy, half-filling the vessel, before another wave overturned it.

Neither were wearing life jackets, which Mr Short said weren’t compulsory at the time and made too bulky for cray pot fishing.

“Jeff just said ‘I’ll stay here with the dinghy’ and I said ‘I’ll swim and bring the boat and pick you up’,” Mr Short said.

“That’s the last time I saw Jeff.”

A Mercury article from 1990 quotes Mr Short as saying he’d wrenched his back from the episode, but “the real pain’s in my heart”.

“By all rights I should have been the one that didn’t make it, not Jeffery,” he said.

Mr Cooper will deliver his findings in the coming weeks.