Journalist Graham Smith has submitted his own investigation to the judge conducting an inquiry into a lost trawler.

The Gaul sank with all hands in 1974 in the Barents Sea off the North Cape at the height of the Cold War with the loss of all 36 crew. How and why she sank remains a mystery.

Graham has been campaigning for the families - and has tried to show that one of the crew is actually dead, despite officials denying his death in a move which has prevented the widow from remarrying.

Sheila Doone was turned away from a register office because the lack of a body meant she could not hand over a death certificate for her husband, one of the Gaul's crew.

Graham said it was clear that permission to marry was refused because someone who knew radio operator John Doone said he spotted him in a bar in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1978.

So after learning that the barrister for the Gaul Families, Timothy Saloman QC, did not feel it worthwhile to bring up the full circumstances of John Doone's alleged sighting, told in full on Graham's Mediaworld website, the journalist submitted papers and a statement to inquiry Judge, Mr Justice Steele.

Graham said: "I have pointed out that the story of the sighting, and the continuing refusal by the authorities at the highest level, for Sheila to marry her partner, Ernest Green, are inextricably linked and should be fully heard by the inquiry."

Graham has already appealed to John Prescott to have John Doone declared officially dead but he declined.

Read more about his fight in our story:
"I am married to a ghost!".

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