A dockyard worker said he could not sleep for six months after seeing a colleague's head crushed at Shoreham Harbour.

Sean Currey relived the incident on the second day of the trial of Euromin Ltd and manager Richard Martell at the Old Bailey in London.

The court heard Mr Currey was working in the hold of a ship with Sussex University student Simon Jones.

Mr Currey said they were attaching sacks of stones to an excavator grab so they could be unloaded. But within hours of starting work for Euromin on April 24, 1998, Mr Jones was crushed by the jaws of the excavator.

Mr Currey told the court: "I honestly don't know what I saw. It was something that triggered sheer panic in me.

"I knew he was dead. The grab had closed around the back of his head.

"It was not until the grab opened a little way and he fell that I realised it had been holding him upright."

Mr Currey said he ran out of the ship's hold.

He said: "I looked back down to Simon. There was nothing I could do.

"The best I could do was guide the ambulance in."

Asked by Patrick O'Connor, prosecuting, how he felt after the incident, Mr Currey replied: "I didn't sleep for six months."

Mr Currey said there had been problems communicating with Polish seaman Piotr Kasprzak who was acting as hatchman.

The hatchman passes information between the workers in the hold and the grab operator, who cannot see inside the ship.

But Mr Currey said the person who usually performed this role was working elsewhere that day, meaning Mr Kasprzak, who could not speak English, acted as go-between.

Mr Currey said the mechanical grab had been dropped too low a number of times that morning.

Mr Kasprzak later told the court he had not performed the role, prior to that day, for about ten years, although he knew the signals after spending 20 years as a crane operator.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said a hook, instead of a grab, would normally have been used to lift bags from a hold.

The court was earlier told Martell had personally ordered two hooks be welded to the side of the grab to save time.

Martell, of Aldingbourne Drive, Crocker Hill, Chichester, denies the manslaughter of 24-year-old Mr Jones.

A charge of manslaughter and four Health and Safety violations alleged against the company have also been denied.

The case continues.