A SCOTTISH fisherman is presumed dead after his boat ran aground on a beach in Montrose.
Ben Dowie, 28, was working single-handedly on the Sea Eagle, a catamaran fishing vessel, when the accident occurred on December 20, 2025.
The Maritime Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) report details how the probe into the incident was “unable to determine the accident circumstances and the cause of the skipper’s entry into the water or whether he was wearing a personal flotation device (PFD) at the time”.
Dowie was creel fishing in the early hours of the morning when the accident occurred.
The accident report says Dowie and the Sea Eagle departed Arbroath sailing towards fishing grounds south-east of Montrose.
At around 9.05am, the fisherman engaged the autopilot, and sometime after that “left the wheelhouse and subsequently entered the water”.
It was just under two hours later, at 10.55am, that two people walking on Inverbervie beach noticed a fishing vessel approaching before it ran ashore six minutes later.
“The two people then approached the vessel, identified it as Sea Eagle, and noticed it was unmanned. They boarded the vessel, stopped its engines and, at 11.12, alerted Police Scotland,” the report explained.
Shortly after Police Scotland notified Aberdeen Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC), and a coastguard rescue team, four RNLI lifeboats, two search and rescue helicopters, a SAR fixed-wing aircraft and nine nearby vessels launched a search to locate Dowie.
“At about 1700, the fishing vessel Aurora located Sea Eagle’s last known string of creels and retrieved it on board to check for entanglement of the missing skipper,” the report adds.
It states that the string had a dhan flag missing, a high-visibility marker flag used in creel fishing, was missing at one end and there was “no sign of the skipper”.
“Aurora’s crew subsequently returned the gear to the water and restarted the search. At 2130, Aberdeen MRCC stood down searching assets and the search for the missing skipper was terminated,” the report said.
It also said there was “minor scoring damage” to the hull of the Sea Eagle and its outboard engines.
“There were 15 creels on board, located at the forward end of the shooting table, with a partially filled box of crabs, another of lobster and some bait,” the accident report reads.
“Several creels were double stacked, including some which appeared to have toppled from the upper stack to the starboard side deck. The broken tail end of a dhan flag was on the deck forward of the shooting table.”
It concluded: “Sea Eagle’s skipper entered the water at some point after setting the autopilot and leaving the wheelhouse. As the skipper was fishing alone and has not been located the accident mechanism and cause of his death are unknown.
“No alarm was raised and the vessel continued unmanned before running ashore two hours later. The skipper was not found in the ensuing SAR operation and was presumed lost.”
