SUNKEN boat owner John Simmonds was stunned into silence yesterday when he was handed hundreds of pounds worth of donations from Oxford Mail readers.

Mr Simmonds, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, said he could never have expected the level of support from the public after he received donations of clothing, bedding and money.

The 35-year-old said the acts of kindness from readers had made him feel “incredible” after he lost everything when his £60,000 boat hit the Botley Road bridge in Oxford and sank to the bottom of the Thames last week. He believes it was an act of sabotage, but the Environment Agency said it was caused by bad weather.

He said: “When everything happened to my boat, all I was really thinking about was what on earth I was going to do with it and how I was going to sort my life out.

“I never really thought that this many people would have got behind me and helped me so I just can’t thank them enough.

“To have received letters, bedding and all this money is really quite something.”

The IT specialist, who is currently staying with friends, has received a pledge of £25,000 from a man who wished to remain anonymous, which brings the total money raised by Mail readers to more than £27,000.

Mr Simmonds said he left The Old Peculier for only half an hour last Monday afternoon but by the time he returned he found a huge crowd of people looking at his boat, which was one of two that crashed into the bridge.

He first moored his boat by the bridge four years ago on land that has been the subject of dispute. The city council did not originally own the towpath next to the boat before acquiring it about two years ago, effectively making him a squatter.

Yesterday Mr Simmonds said he was waiting for the Environment Agency to give him an access date to his boat, which is secured on dry land by the bridge after being removed from the river by engineers on Friday.

Environment Agency spokesman Dan Taylor said: “I have spoken to our management and there’s still some water in the boat which we need to remove and we’ll be engaging a company to pump that out and tanker the water away.

“There is no set date as yet but once we do have one we’ll need to liaise with Oxford City Council in terms of removing the boat because that probably will necessitate a short closure of Botley Road and possibly the footpath.”

* To donate aid or cheques to John Simmonds. send them to Oxford Mail, Newspaper House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0EJ.