Mystery today surrounds a cry for help heard over the airwaves.
Coastguards monitoring ships' radios overheard someone call out mayday - the yachting distress call - but the message was soon drowned out by another conversation.
Minutes later the coastguard station at Walton received a call from a sailor off the Canvey coast who had also overheard the distress call on his own radio.
Watch manager Bruce Lac said: "One of our operators heard the distress call at about 8am yesterday. We spent more than an hour sending out radio messages to the caller and also to other ships to see if they knew anything but no one did."
Published Friday, March 8, 2002
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