Relief as sinking boat in Walsall Town Wharf empty
Police officers dived into Walsall Town Wharf after reports a person was trapped on a sinking boat.
But thankfully there was no one on board and the team managed to keep the small vessel afloat.
The alarm was raised after people spotted the boat, moored up near to the New Art Gallery, sinking into the canal basin.
Walsall operations support unit posted on Twitter: “We were deployed to concerns that a person was potentially trapped on a boat as it sank in Walsall.
“Putting water search skills and method of entry into practice revealed this was not the case.”
The specialist search team, which operates in water as well as confined spaces, teamed up with Walsall Police.
A number of cars have ended up in the water at the same spot in the past.
A six-month-old BMW in Walsall went into the water after the driver mistook a blanket of algae for grass.
The driver got lost in the pedestrianised area of the town and drove into the water in 2007.
The man, in his 40s, was not the first to make a mistake – a pensioner, in 1999, drove a Rover 400 into the same canal basin.e basin.
