A SPECIALIST consultant used dental records to confirm that the body found in the River Ouse was that of a missing sailor, York's coroner has revealed.

Police launched a search operation at the beginning of this month to find Austrian-born Nicholas Detlef Lightowler after he vanished, leaving the luxury motor cruiser he was using drifting on the River Ouse.

His body was recovered last Saturday by police divers 200 metres upstream from Clifton Bridge, after it was spotted by a passing jet-skier.

Opening an inquest into his death, York coroner Donald Coverdale said that a maxillo-facial surgeon had used Mr Lightowler's dental records to confirm his identity.

He said "comprehensive and detailed" inquiries had been made to identify the body.

"The procedure of using dental records was necessary given the amount of time Mr Lightowler had been in the river, making conventional forms of identification inappropriate," he said.

Mr Coverdale said a consultant pathologist had given multiple injuries as a "provisional cause of death".

Mr Lightowler, 57, who had recently moved to Primrose Garth, Leeds, from Hazlemere, in Buckinghamshire, disappeared after taking a £115,000 motor cruiser from Naburn Lock on August 2. The damaged boat was found near Nether Poppleton and police divers and search teams scoured the river for days afterwards.

The boat had earlier been seen struggling to negotiate Skeldergate Bridge on the swollen river, and police feared Mr Lightowler, who needed regular dialysis treatment, had been thrown overboard.

The inquest was adjourned to a date to be fixed.

Updated: 11:39 Friday, August 23, 2002