Royal Commission Report p118
“… although no direct reference is made to [Beaufort Island] in the CVR transcript apart from Mr Mulgrew’s “land ahead”, the five persons on the flight deck undoubtedly saw Beaufort Island, and mistook it for a different island altogether …”
‘Verdict on Erebus’ p202
"Mulgrew had been to Antarctica on previous occasions and he would have identified Beaufort Island without hesitation at low altitude during the orbiting sequences. But he had not seen it. "
So the Honourable bull****-artist completely contradicts himself, but then goes on to the point where an informed reader becomes embarrassed:
"As the aircraft straightened up and resumed its Nav track, Beaufort Island was now about four miles behind, and there could be no doubt , on this reconstruction, that as the DC10 flew onwrds towards disaster, Mulgrew had never had the chance to see that Beaufort Island was on the right of the aircraft instead of on the left, and to reaslise, with his past experience of the region, that they were flying directly at Ross Island. …
In later days, I though over again what I have just described. I tried to imagine Peter Mulgrew making his way forward along the aisle, moving a little slowly with his artificial legs, anxious to reach the flight deck …
Perhaps as he neared the flight deck a passenger detained him for a minute or two. Perhaps he stopped to converse with a group of people standing in the aisle. …
If only Mulgrew had reached the flight deck two minutes earlier …
I could not escape the conclusion that a delay of only two minutes in reaching the flight deck … had prevented him from averting disaster. And I reflected, as I had done so often before, upon the malignity of the hovering fates which had shadowed throughout its journey the flight path ofTW901."
He visits the ice, concludes that Mulgrew never saw Beaufort Island but never says so in his subsequent report and actually says the opposite. The phrase "bull****-artist" is overly flattering.