A coroner has delivered findings into the death of a Tasmanian fisherman nearly 67 years after he was swept from his boat during a Bass Strait storm.
Raymond Henry Elson was 31 when he drowned on June 12, 1959, after being knocked overboard by the boom of his 30-foot fishing vessel Jocelyn near Waterhouse Island.
His body was never recovered.
Coroner Olivia McTaggart handed down her findings on February 27, after the case was referred to her office in September 2025.
The investigation was triggered when Elson’s daughter requested coronial records and discovered no inquiry had ever been carried out.
McTaggart said the death had ‘slipped through the cracks’ because the law in force at the time did not allow coroners to investigate suspected deaths where no body was found.
Elson and his 17-year-old crewmate Brian Howard had set out from Bridport on June 10, 1959. Howard had been fishing for just four months.
The pair sheltered behind Waterhouse Island when a storm rolled in the following day.
By the morning of June 12, the vessel’s radio batteries were failing.
The storm strengthened rapidly, tearing at the steering and dragging the anchor. Seas reached 20 feet and winds hit 60 knots.
Unable to haul the anchor up, the men cut it loose and the boat ran under sail. Elson was struck by the boom and thrown into the water.
Howard threw a life belt and saw his skipper swimming towards it, but both the belt and the boat drifted away in the swell.
The Jocelyn washed up the next day at Two Mile Beach, near Cape Portland, more than 70 kilometres from where Elson went overboard.
McTaggart based much of her account on an interview Howard gave to a local newspaper days after the tragedy, which she said she accepted as “inherently reliable”.
She found Elson died by misadventure while working as a commercial fisherman and ruled out any suspicious circumstances.
No inquest will be held as his daughter told the court she did not want one.
“I convey my sincere condolences to the family and loved ones of Mr Elson,” McTaggart said.
