A helicopter from RNAS Culdrose winched the crew to safety

The five crewmen were airlifted to safety from their boat, the Duguesclin, which sank 30 miles off the Falmouth coast at 1800 GMT Sunday.

They were uninjured and spent the night at the Fisherman's Mission in Newlyn.

The Breton boat is thought to have had a leak in its engine room when it sank.

Five dead

Emergency services said the boat sank only 15 minutes after the crew clambered into a liferaft.

One of the rescuers, Petty Office Alan Marjoribanks, of 771 Squadron, RNAS Culdrose, said: "The vessel was nowhere to be seen.

"There was no radar contact, so it had obviously gone down pretty rapidly.

"When we hovered about 30 metres from the liferaft it was clear that most of the crew were in there."

The ship sank only 10 days after another French trawler, the Bugaled Breizh, went down off Lizard Point nearby, killing five crew.

Two bodies have been recovered from the Bugaled Breizh, which was believed to have been hit by a container ship.