Simon Jones arrived at Shoreham docks just after 8am for his first day working for Euromin. He was dead before lunchtime.

Simon, a 24-year-old social anthropology student at the University of Sussex, had signed on with Brighton temping agency Personnel Selection which found him the position at short notice.

On April 24, 1998, only one of the six men emptying the ship's hold was a full-time employee.

Simon was sent to work in the cargo hold of the Polish cargo ship the Cambrook with the more experienced Sean Currey. Simon was not given a hard hat or training.

Mr Currey, himself a temporary worker, said: "I took him through what we would be doing and how we would be going about it. How to move around the bags without going down the holes.

"It's a very fast machine and I showed him where he needed to be and where not to be. He was very bright and picked it up almost straight away."

The firm used an excavator to transfer bagged and loose aggregate for road building to and from docked vessels.

The German-made Liebherr vehicle had two attachments, a two-and-a-half-tonne mechanical grab and a hook.

The hook would be used with chains to lift bags of cobblestones while the grab was made for lifting loose materials.

Two months before the accident, Richard Martell, general manager of Euromin's British operation, instructed two smaller hooks should be welded to the side of the grab to save time.

The open grab would be lowered into ships, with chains hanging from the middle, for dockers to attach the bags to.

On the morning Simon died, the length of the chains had been shortened from eight to six feet, reducing the range between the workers' heads and the grab.

Mr Martell told the court: "I had no knowledge and I still don't know why they were shortened. I cannot see any operational reason for the shortening of the chains."

On that day, the banksman or hatchman, who performed the crucial role in signalling directions, was a Polish seaman from the Cambrook who spoke no English.

Piotr Kasprzak said he had not acted in that capacity for ten years, although he knew the signals after working as a crane operator at docks in Poland.

The mechanism for closing the jaws was touch-sensitive and it was accepted in court that experienced excavator Jim Harris must have accidentally closed the grab while Simon's head was inside.

Mr Harris has since died but was previously cleared of any criminal responsibility.

Simon died when the jaws of the grab, which weighed more than two tonnes, closed on him.