Trawler explosion at sea…
DELBERT Williams, Captain of the missing fishing vessel, ‘Captain Lloyd 97’ which caught afire last Saturday, had still not being found up to late yesterday.
Consequently, there is speculation that he may have perished as he and four other crew members scampered for their lives from the ill-fated boat.
Unconfirmed reports said, after the craft became engulfed in flames, he was placed in a bin and lowered into the water but, if he drowned, his body should have floated by now.
Meanwhile, of the four survivors, 19-year-old Orlando Munroe, of  Cane Grove, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara, suffered the worst fate, with burns all over his body. He remained in a critical condition in the Burns Care Unit of Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).
His distraught mother, Sherran Munroe and other relatives, however, breathed sighs of relief when he, for the first time yesterday, ate small portions of food and communicated with them at his bedside.
Responding to treatment, too, was 20-year-old Eric Abrams who panicked and jumped overboard on realising that there was a fire. He was rescued by a passing Venezuelan vessel and sat up in bed yesterday, nursing  burns to his face, back, hands and shoulders but seemed to have faint recollections of the tragedy.
He remembered being asleep when the blaze started and was awakened by the commotion.
A third man, George Fitzpatrick, whose condition was also listed as stable, is being treated for burns to his upper body.

SIMILAR CONDITION
The fourth man to survive, Elvis Todd was also in similar condition.
‘Captain Lloyd 97’ is the second fishing trawler to have caught afire near the Guyana/Venezuelan border over the last three months, with the captain being feared drowned.
Another striking similarity in the two instances is that, on both occasions, a Venezuelan vessel happened to be passing by and managed to rescue crew members from the murky waters.
On March 18 last, the ‘Sudesh’, owned by Deodat Bissoon, of Parika, went up in flames on the high seas, several miles off Waini River, in the North West District after being torched by pirates.
The skipper, Vasdeo Persaud and three crew abandoned ship but he was most severely burnt, could not swim for very long and went under.
The survivors, who managed to reach a life buoy and clung to it despite turbulent waters, were later plucked from the deep by a passing Venezuelan vessel.
A few days later, it was reported that Persaud’s badly decomposed corpse was found and buried on the Venezuelan coast line.
The surviving three have returned home and ‘Sudesh’ was seen along the coast, minus its engine.
The last of the trio, Peppe Singh, of Vergenoegen, on the East Bank of Essequibo, was back at his residence about three weeks ago, after being hospitalised in Puerto Das, Venezuela.