MISTAKES were made by the crews of both vessels involved in a collision in Danish waters last year which claimed the lives of five Scottish fisherman, a German sea court found yesterday.

A five-strong panel from the Hamburg Maritime Office in Germany found that neither crew bore full responsibility for the accident, following a hearing, attended by relatives of the dead crew.

The 125ft Mallaig-registered fishing vessel Silvery Sea sank immediately after colliding with the German coaster Merkur 25 miles west of the Danish port of Esbjerg in clear and calm conditions on June 14 last year.

Silvery Sea skipper Alexander ''Zander'' Mason, 57, Mr Alex Mackenzie, 32, both from Mallaig, Mr Michael Dyer, 36, Mr Alan MacDonald, 31, from Morar and Mr Billy Tait, 42, from Fraserburgh, went down with the boat.

The Merkur suffered damage to her port side and started to take in water, but was kept afloat with the support of several vessels.

The inquiry team found that, although the Scottish vessel had not changed course as she should have prior to the collision, the first officer of the German vessel had left his post on the bridge and had not ensured a crewman was maintaining the watch.

However, the panel ruled the Merkur's first officer, Mr Gerd Gayde, should not lose his seafaring licence.

The families of the dead men declined to comment after the ruling, but their solicitor, Mr Kenneth Macrae, insisted they had no interest in attributing blame, only in learning the circumstances surrounding their loved ones' fates.

Head of the court, Regierungsdirektor Dieter Graf, said: ''The fishing vessel did not comply to its duty, for reasons which cannot be disclosed, to get out of the way.

''The nautical officer on the mv Merkur has not made use of the radar installation in such a way that he passed on sufficient information about the time of collision to be expected.

''He has left the bridge temporarily without a regular deputy, and therefore has acted too late.''

Earlier, Mr Gayde claimed he became aware of the Silvery Sea at around 7.45am, when she was still seven nautical miles to the port of his vessel, but had no reason to assume it would not change course.

By 8am, he said he had activated the alarm but received no reaction from the Mallaig vessel, before launching a general alarm and turning the Merkur starboard in an effort to avoid a collision.

But two police officers who boarded the vessel later claimed Mr Gayde had said nobody had been on the bridge, although it was not clear whether he was speaking about his own vessel or the Silvery Sea.

After the hearing, Mr Macrae said: ''We are pleased that we have had the opportunity to figure out the circumstances of the collision. But it is only one side of the story. We heard submissions of what might have happened, but no conclusion can be drawn that the Silvery Sea's bridge was unmanned.'

The inquiry heard the Silvery Sea, built in 1976 and worth about #1.5m, had been well equipped and there was no reason to suggest she had not been seaworthy.

She had been bound for Esbjerg with a cargo of sand eels, while the Merkur, built in 1991 and owned by the Hamburg-based Gerhard Bartels KG, had been en route from Hamburg to Gothenburg.

Meanwhile, families of the four Sapphire crewman who drowned after the sinking of the Peterhead-based trawler in 1997 are expected to lodge multi-million pound damages claims against the owners of the vessel at the Court of Session in Edinburgh in the next few days.