A respected fisherman who once met King Charles has been jailed for 16 years and nine months for captaining a boat in a £18m cocaine-smuggling plot. Peter Williams, 44, from Havant, Hampshire, admitted conspiracy to import class A drugs after leading Border Force officers on a 28-mile chase off the Cornish coast.
Truro Crown Court heard that Williams, a former vice-chair of the charity Fishing into the Future, fell on hard times after his father died in his presence on a boat nearly 20 years ago. He developed a cocaine habit and accrued significant debt, leading his drug dealers to recruit him as skipper of a rigid-hull inflatable boat (RHIB) for the smuggling operation in September last year.
The plot involved a “mother ship” transporting cocaine from South America, which dropped packages into the sea off Cornwall for Williams to collect. However, the operation was spotted by a UK Border Force cutter, and Williams ran the RHIB aground on Gwynver beach near Land’s End after a high-speed chase.
In mitigation, Williams’ barrister Harry Laidlaw described his client’s actions as a “massive fall from grace”. He said Williams had represented fishermen for years, meeting King Charles on several occasions to discuss sustainable fishing and youth involvement in the industry. “He has made a terrible series of decisions,” Laidlaw added.
Sentencing Williams, Judge Adkin said: “This was an international conspiracy to smuggle a large quantity of cocaine into the UK.” He described Williams as a “trusted gang member”. Five other men have been sentenced over the same plot, with one more to be dealt with next month.
