Environmental experts have carried out pollution tests following complaints that gases and soot are drifting ashore from a cruise liner.

Yesterday, it also emerged that the Marine Police are considering prosecuting the ship's Master and agents over an incident last Friday when a cloud of soot smothered boats and restaurant diners.

According to Dr. Tom Sleeter, an environmental engineer with the Environment Ministry, the Dockyard Marina complained that gases from the Meridian 's stack were drifting ashore.

He said there had also been two episodes this season when soot from the ship's stack had rained down onto yachts, including last Friday.

"We put two mobile air vans in the area to measure the emissions from the ship, but it will be a couple of weeks before we get the results,'' said Dr.

Sleeter.

He said the tests were measuring amounts of sodium dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and the density of the soot.

"I got a complaint last Friday and I asked the Marine Police to go down.

There was a request to deploy oil containment booms because there was so much soot in the water and I asked the Police to go down and check out the incident.'' Last August, the Meridian also fell foul of local boat owners who complained that soot was falling on their boats.

However, the Meridian is a steam ship with three boilers to drive the turbines. The boilers get sooty which collects inside.

While in port, the ship will normally use just one boiler and will have to start the other two from cold, meaning soot, which has collected inside, will be blown out of the stack.

It is uneconomical to run all three boilers while in port and although a high grade of fuel could help it would not eliminate the problem, which also badly affected Hamilton in the 1980s.

In that case, the problems of soot, which sometimes smothered the whole of Front Street, were only solved when the boats were replaced by more modern ships.

Talks between the Meridian 's Master and its Bermuda agents, Meyer Agencies, took place earlier this week, following Friday's incident.

According to Mr. Henry Hayward, Meyer's president, the ship had to shut a boiler down for repairs. "Then they lit up this cold boiler, hence all the smoke that was generated and of course the wind was in the worst possible direction.'' Mr. Hayward said if in the future it was necessary to carry out similar work, the vessel would be towed away from the Island.

However, he added: "You will never eliminate the smoke completely, you cannot do much about smoke from a steam ship.

Admitting there were also problems last year, he stressed there were no problems in 1993 adding that on-shore winds were more prevalent in 1994 and this year than ever before.

"Last year the smoke was more than usual because we had a lot of south east winds. The prevailing wind is normally south west.

"Since the ship has been arriving at Bermuda we have never had as much trouble as we did last year.'' A Police spokesman confirmed the Marine Division was called to the Dockyard last Friday.

He added: "The investigation is still continuing and a prosecution of the ship's Master and agents is being considered.''