THE captain and crew of the 9,200-ton chemical carrier suspected of ploughing into a French fishing boat and killing five men thought it was a buoy, it has been claimed.

A statement was made yesterday by the Danish firm who had chartered the ship, Sichem Pandora, which has been accused by French officials of ‘accidental involvement’ in the tragedy.

At a press conference Claus Thornberg, the director of Tesma Holding, revealed that ‘all the crew of the ship saw was a light in front of them, but there was no trace of another vessel on the radar.

The crew respected navigation rules and changed course thinking that the light came from a buoy’.

He said those aboard ‘saw no signal and no sonar echo’ and felt ‘no impact of a collision’.

The French maritime police believe that the Sichem Pandora ploughed into the 15-metre Kleine Familie, a Cherbourg-registered longliner, in the early hours of Thursday.

There was just one survivor from the suspected collision north of Alderney – a 19-year-old apprentice fisherman who was on his first trip to sea.

The five dead men had 11 children between them.