* * * * *
It was not until the following day that the question was answered.
Brandon and Old Negus had to attend court as witnesses against the crew of the Marie-Celeste. Then it came out that the coastguards had picked up Brandon's signals, but very wisely they refrained from answering them lest the poachers should take alarm.
The coastguards immediately telephoned to the Divisional Headquarters at Aberstour. The fishery protection gunboat was away, her position by wireless being given as eighty miles sou'-sou'-west of her port.
Clearly she was too far away, even at her speed of twenty-two knots, to be on the scene in time; so Aberstour sent out a general wireless call, which was picked up by the destroyer Seagull, which was on her way from Portsmouth to Sheerness, and at the time was only eleven miles from the Silverknoll Bank. Thirty-five minutes after receiving the message the Seagull had captured the Marie-Celeste.
Caught red-handed the Belgians were fined £200 and their gear confiscated. Old Negus received £50 compensation for the deliberate destruction of his trawl, and Patrol-leader Brandon was highly complimented for his part in the capture of the poachers:
More than that, the mystery of the scarcity of fish on the Silverknoll Bank was satisfactorily cleared up, since foreign drifters no longer run the risk of trawling within the three-mile limit off that part of the coast.