HARBOUR authority Clydeport was twice convicted in court for serious safety failures prior to the Flying Phantom tragedy, it’s emerged.

The company was investigated in 2001 following a shoreside fatality at its Hunterston terminal and fined £5,000.

And bosses had been ordered to pay out £7,500 the previous year for a separate contravention of workplace health and safety at Hunterston.

Both of those matters were prosecuted at sheriff court level but Clydeport is now facing a much stiffer financial penalty when it is sentenced on Monday over the Phantom tug tragedy, which cost the lives of three men.

Earlier this week the firm — part of the giant Peel Ports organisation — tendered a plea of guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh in respect of health and safety breaches related to fatal accident.

It happened during the towing of the giant 77,000-tonne bulk carrier, Red Jasmine, up the River Clyde in thick fog.

It has been revealed, in an agreed court narrative of what happened to the tug on 19 December 2007, that the pilot appointed to the Red Jasmine on the fateful day was not the one who had completed its plan for passage to Glasgow.

The pilot was the man who had been in charge of an almost identical incident in 2000 involving the towing of an Egyptian cargo ship, the Abu Egila, during which the Flying Phantom was in danger of capsizing and sinking before she eventually ran aground.

It has been indicated in High Court papers that even on a clear day, the approximate distance of the pilot’s line of sight from the bridge of the Red Jasmine only goes as far as the middle of the 225-metre long ship.

The vessel — laden with a heavy cargo of animal feed from Brazil — had continued on its journey to Glasgow after both radio and mobile phone contact with the Flying Phantom had been lost.

A superintendent for the tug’s owner, Svitzer Marine, had been trying to get information from Clydeport’s estuary control HQ in Greenock about what had happened to the Phantom, pictured, after he was contacted by ‘colleagues’.

However, the operator told him that the pilot ‘hadn’t mentioned anything’.

The Svitzer superintendent replied: “Jesus...one of our tugs has run aground and he’s not even reported it.” Estuary control stated: “Yeah but no.” According to the court narrative, the operator then said that there was ‘something going on’ on the VHF radio.

Phantom master Stephen Humphreys, 33, of Greenock, deckhand Eric Blackley, 57, of Gourock, and engineer Robert Cameron, 65, of Houston, all drowned when the fogbound tug foundered whilst towing Red Jasmine.

The bulk carrier’s speed was recorded at 5.5 knots while the tug had been travelling at just 2.2 knots which resulted in the small boat ‘girting’ — being pulled over and capsizing before the tow rope could be disengaged.

The court narrative states: “As the Flying Phantom was pulled over by the towline, the hulls of both vessels must have made contact as fresh damage was noted to the starboard hull of the Red Jasmine in the aftermath.

“Paint samples from this area of damage were a match for the paintwork of the tug.” Flying Phantom’s owners, Svitzer Marine, were previously fined £1.7 million over the tragedy.

Judge Lord Kinclaven will pass sentence on Clydeport on Monday.