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A Russian Submarine May Have Nearly Destroyed A Fishing Boat In The Irish Sea

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 02:49 PST, May 12, 2015

A British fishing vessel was nearly capsized in late April by an unknown object which the crew now suspects was a Russian submarine on a mission to test Western defenses.

The harrowing and chaotic incident began when Captain Paul Murphy’s trawler, the Karen, was preparing to head home from international waters, according to the New York Times. Without warning, the boat shuddered to a halt, and the cables that connected the vessel to its fishing nets tensed. When the boat began moving once more, it was dragged backward, setting off on a disjointed course that Murphy can now trace.

“It was like the scene out of Jaws when the boat took off — do you remember, the shark took the boat away?” he asked. “But multiply it by 100. It was just a bigger event.”

The Karen is an 80-ton trawler, and few things in the ocean have the ability to stop such a vessel dead in its tracks, let alone drag it along. Murphy is convinced that he ensnared a submarine, and with NATO and the British Navy denying involvement in the incident, suspicion has fallen on Russia.

Though astonishing, Murphy’s encounter with the submarine is actually the second such incident to occur off the United Kingdom in a month. As the Inquisitr previously reported, a group of Scottish fisherman found themselves in similar straits in March, when their trawler was nearly dragged under by a suspected Russian submarine they inadvertently snared.

The Karen’s unusual encounter coincided with a NATO exercise taking place off the British coast, and at the time the trawler ensnared the suspected submarine, the British Navy found itself distracted by the appearance of several Russian warships in the English channel.

Recently, as a pattern of similar encounters with suspected Russian submarines has developed, including highly publicized incidents in Sweden last year and more recently, Finland, experts have asserted that Russia is likely testing the capabilities and reaction times of its Western adversaries. Since March 2014, at least 40 incidents have transpired in which Russian forces have interacted with NATO, as Business Insider notes.

Murphy pointed out that his ship was only seconds from sinking when a bound cable connecting his fishing nets to the Karen snapped, leaving the ship floating in quiet and still water after its encounter with what he believes could only have been a Russian submarine.

[Image via Gizmodo]

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