Firefighters battled for more than 24 hours to deal with a massive boat blaze in Peterhead.
Crews from across Aberdeenshire raced to the incident at the town’s Port Henry Basin on Tuesday morning when the alarm was raised that flames had been spotted coming from a trawler.
The Inverness-registered Ardent II caught fire at about 6am on Tuesday and continued to smoulder into yesterday afternoon.
Finally, by 3.20pm, firefighters cleared the area, but only after dampening the vessel and quay to make the area safe for investigators to move in.
At the blaze’s peak, 34 firefighters from Ellon, Fraserburgh, Peterhead and Maud were involved in battling the flames.
Yesterday, a spokeswoman for the fire service said operations to make the scene safe had “concluded” and responsibility for the vessel was being handed over to Police Scotland.
Buchan police inspector George Cordiner added that teams were expected back at the harbour today to begin piecing together what had caused the conflagration.
He said: “The joint fire and police investigation was scheduled for this morning [Wednesday], but we’ve had to wait for the vessel to cool down.
“It is expected that the investigation will begin tomorrow morning.”
Temperatures on the outside metalwork of the Ardent II reached 200C on Tuesday.
The ship, which was unmanned at the time of the fire, is owned by the McPherson family from Hopeman, in Moray.
Hamish McPherson, who skippered the Ardent II before his son took over in 2000, is understood to have owned the boat since it was built in 1986.
Marine Accident Investigation Branch officers were also due to begin examining the vessel yesterday, but were unable to make a start at the scheduled time.
The cause of the fire is currently unknown.
Fisherman Jimmy Buchan, of BBC series Trawlermen fame, claimed that boat fires had the potential to be catastrophic.
He said: “A fire on a ship is one of the worst things that can happen with the speed that it can spread.”
