Fred Attewill talks exclusively to the man who raised the alarm.

A RESCUER has told of the harrowing last moments of the doomed Sweetie Pie and the desperate search for people trapped inside after it went down.

The skipper closest to the cruiser, who wants to remain anonymous, was about 20 yards downstream as the tragedy unfolded.a man standing on the deck gives an impression of the boat's size as it is refloated.

The sound of people hitting the water from the 23ft party boat - carrying 16 - first grabbed his attention after it had performed a U-turn and was heading back up to Stourport Marina.

He did not know if they had jumped into the river or fallen in but said the Sweetie Pie had already taken on water and was very low at the stern.

"The situation was being made gradually worse the more people were getting back into the boat," he said.

"I would say from my initially seeing people falling into the water and it sinking would have been several minutes."

He added: "The back went down first. As it went down it turned over."

After shouting for help from a boat mooring on the shore he then launched his dinghy with a friend and approached the submerged cruiser which had four partygoers clinging to it while other rescuers picked up people in the water.

"I was lying on the boat but I had my head, neck and shoulders through a space. I couldn't feel anything other than cushions and curtains," he said.

"My friend stripped and went through the boat. We'll have to live with the fact we didn't find that lady.

"We were as convinced as we could be there was nobody left in the boat."

The pair took the four people in their dinghy back to the bank and only heard on the fire brigade radio Jane Turner had been found and her unconscious body recovered after rescuers smashed a window.

Maggie Murphy, the owner of the 130-boat Stourport Marina who was in the club house at the time, said dozens of people rushed to help as soon as the mayday call went out to rescue the partygoers stranded in the water.

At first boaters believed everybody was safe but when news of the grim discovery spread the mood turned to "devastation", she added.

Miss Murphy added the two women who owned the narrow-beam Sweetie Pie had bought it about three months ago.

"But they had had boats before with partners. They were as experienced as any of the boaters can be and they had taken the boat out on a number of occasions," she said.

Chief Insp Alan Baldwin, who co-ordinated the rescue operation, said: "I believe this would have been an accident on a much greater scale had it not been for the tremendous efforts of the emergency services, SARA and members of the public who responded superbly to this incident."