The Gaul sunk in heavy seas in 1974 with 36 men aboard

The ship went down in the Barents Sea 30 years ago but new technology has offered experts a better idea about the weather the ship experienced.

Suspicions the vessel was being used to spy on Soviet ships have been dismissed.

The ship went down in 1974 with the loss of all 36 men on board.

Expert witnesses

The model tests were conducted by MARIN, the maritime research institute of the Netherlands.

The inquiry has been given a brief presentation of the model tests by the institute, but now expert witnesses will pick through the detailed findings.

After a survey of the Gaul's wreck on the sea bed in 2002, experts were able to assess what state she was in.

They believe the waste chutes and factory access door were open on the surface, but it is unclear whether the engine room escape hatch or fish and net hatches fell open as she descended to the sea bed.

Water tank

Experts are unclear whether the hatches were open to the storm on the day the ship went down.

Using this information the MARIN team built a model with various openings allowing water to spill into the factory spaces of the model.

An underwater camera reveals the wheelhouse of the sunken Gaul

A water tank then simulated the waves and winds to the scales the Gaul is likely to have encountered in February 1974.

The inquiry has heard there has been speculation for more than 30 years on the possible cause of the Gaul's sinking and a belief that the ship had been seized by the Soviet Union and the crew imprisoned, or that the vessel had been torpedoed or accidentally sunk by a Russian submarine.

Most of the men who died on the Gaul were from Hull, but six were from North Shields, Tyne and Wear, and one was from Nelson, Lancashire.

The reopened inquiry was ordered by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in 1999, after the wreck of the Gaul was found on the seabed and surveyed.

The first 1974 inquiry into the sinking concluded that the ship was overwhelmed by mountainous seas.