A cargo ship hits a tanker and they catch fire off England, with one crew member miss

[misskit]

A cargo ship hit a tanker transporting jet fuel for the U.S. military off eastern England on Monday, setting both vessels ablaze and sending fuel pouring into the North Sea.

All but one of the 37 crew of the two ships were brought safely ashore. One crew member from the cargo ship, Solong, was missing, the vessel’s owner Ernst Russ said in a statement.


The ship owner said “13 of the 14 Solong crew members have been brought safely (to) shore.” The owner of the fuel tanker said all 23 of its crew members were safe.

The two ships were still ablaze 12 hours after the collision, British coast guards said. They said they had ended the search for the missing crew member. They confirmed 36 others had been brought ashore, one of whom was hospitalized.


The collision triggered a major rescue operation by lifeboats, coast guard aircraft and commercial vessels in the foggy North Sea.

The British government said it was assessing “any counter-pollution response which may be required over the coming days.” The Marine Accident Investigation Branch was investigating the cause of the collision.

The U.S.-flagged chemical and oil products tanker MV Stena Immaculate was at anchor near the port of Grimsby on Monday morning after sailing from Greece, according to ship-tracking site VesselFinder. The Portugal-flagged container ship Solong was sailing from Grangemouth in Scotland to Rotterdam in the Netherlands when it struck the tanker’s side.

U.S.-based maritime management firm Crowley, which operates the Stena Immaculate, said the tanker “sustained a ruptured cargo tank containing Jet-A1 fuel,” when the container ship struck it, triggering a fire and “multiple explosions onboard,” with fuel released into the sea.


The Stena Immaculate was operating as part of the U.S. government’s Tanker Security Program, a group of commercial vessels that can be contracted to carry fuel for the military when needed.

The Solong’s cargo included sodium cyanide, which can produce harmful gas when combined with water, according to industry publication Lloyd’s List Intelligence. It was unclear if there had been a leak.


Britain’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency said the alarm was raised at 9:48 a.m. (0948 GMT). Humber Coast Guard asked vessels with firefighting equipment and those who could help with search and rescue to head to the scene about 155 miles (250 kilometers) north of London.


Video footage aired by British broadcasters and apparently filmed from a nearby vessel showed thick black smoke pouring from both ships.


Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said details of the collision and its cause “are still becoming clear.”


Abdul Khalique, head of the Maritime Center at Liverpool John Moores University, said it appeared the crew of the cargo ship had not been “maintaining a proper lookout by radar” as required by international maritime regulations.


Greenpeace U.K. said it was too early to assess the extent of any environmental damage from the collision, which took place near busy fishing grounds and major seabird colonies.

Scientists said the environmental impact might be less severe than with a spill of heavier crude oil.


“Whilst the images look worrying, from the perspective of the impact to the aquatic environment, it’s less of a concern than if this had been crude oil because most of the jet fuel will evaporate very quickly,” said Mark Hartl of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Biotechnology at Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University.


Mark Sephton, professor of organic geochemistry at Imperial College London, said jet fuel disintegrates more quickly than crude oil, and warmer temperatures speed biodegradation.


“In the end, it all depends on the rate of introduction of fuel and the rate of destruction by bacteria,” he said. “Let’s hope the latter wins out.”

A cargo ship hits a tanker and they catch fire off England, with one crew member missing | AP News

[Shutree]

Solong, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye
I leave and heave a sigh and say "Goodbye", goodbye

[taxexile]

so a ship containing military jet fuel collides with another containing cyanide and one of them is stationary at the time. you would have to be quite naive to not be suspicious
it's such a perfect hit that it looks deliberate. the nav. gear available on a modern ship makes such collisions extremely difficult. the only other possibility is that there was either no one on the bridge, asleep or otherwise incapacitated.

[Mendip]

^ Foul play is always a possibility, but strange things happen at sea and I suspect it was nothing more than a combination of incompetence and negligence.

Maybe that Kiwi woman naval Captain had got herself a new job?

If you can manage to drive a state of the art hydrographic survey vessel onto a coral reef, you can manage anything.

[david44]

Maybe that Kiwi woman naval Captain had got herself a new job?

to be fair to the kiwis Commander Yvonne Gray, she was from Yorkshire!

If it was some kind of Russian interference a serious escalation.

[misskit]

Russia has been meddling with European GPS systems for a while now.

[Neverna]

And don't forget to blame Chinese software!

[david44]

software

viagara has uplifted many mature gents

[david44]

------

[Mendip]

Russia has been meddling with European GPS systems for a while now.

GPS is an American system and I don't really think that would be an issue here.

A ship heading through a known anchorage should be relying on radar as well as GPS, plus eyesight, although apparently visibility was poor but the collision did happen in daylight.

Apparently the cargo ship took absolutely no avoidance measures at all before hitting the anchored tanker... but the news is still coming out.

[Bonecollector]

I heard on one broadcast the Portuguese ship was on autopilot.

"They have a thing called autopilot, and that's what I would suspect has been the issue.
"If it's been put on autopilot and there's no one on the bridge, which could happen, then it'd just go straight on.
"Autopilot just steers a course, they don't deviate, there's no bend in the sea. They just go straight for miles, hundreds of miles, and it would've gone in a straight direction.
"It's difficult to understand what happened, or why it happened."

[misskit]

Cargo ship captain arrested after oil tanker collision in North Sea as experts warn coming hours are ‘critical’

The captain of a cargo vessel has been arrested after a collision with an oil tanker off the East Yorkshire coast, as experts warn the coming hours will be “critical” in determining environmental impact of the crash.


Owners of the Solong container ship confirmed its captain had been arrested, hours after Humberside Police said it had arrested a 59-year-old man on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter following the collision between the Portuguese vessel and US tanker Stena Immaculate.


One crew member from the Solong is still missing and presumed dead, after a search and rescue operation was ended on Monday evening.


Transport minister Mike Kane told MPs on Tuesday that the Solong “continues to burn” at sea and said something went “terribly wrong” for the crash to happen and there was “no evidence” of foul play.

Both vessels were engulfed in flames when the Stena Immaculate was struck by the Solong while anchored off the coast of Hull, causing “multiple explosions” on board and an unknown quantity of Jet A-1 fuel to be released.


There were concerns that the Solong was carrying containers of sodium cyanide on board, however this was later confirmed to not be the case. The transport secretary also said on Tuesday that it was now expected to stay afloat, after previous concerns that the vessel would sink.


The incident has sparked anxiety from experts about the environmental impacts on wildlife and coastal communities - with the next 24 hours expected to be crucial in determining the extent of the damage.


Continue reading


“The next couple of hours will be critical in terms of can they stabilise the cargo vessel,” Dr Simon Boxall, an academic in oceanography at the University of Southampton, told The Independent.


“I understand the cargo ship is still burning and in danger of sinking. The big concern for the is knowing what is in those containers. The second problem is the bunker oil which powers the ship itself which can cause damage.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...al/ar-AA1AIzma

[Mendip]

"They have a thing called autopilot, and that's what I would suspect has been the issue.
"If it's been put on autopilot and there's no one on the bridge, which could happen, then it'd just go straight on.
"Autopilot just steers a course, they don't deviate, there's no bend in the sea. They just go straight for miles, hundreds of miles, and it would've gone in a straight direction.
"It's difficult to understand what happened, or why it happened."

In my experience, once a vessel is in open water it's pretty standard to set autopilot at the start of a voyage, but there's always at least one officer on the bridge, usually at least two crew in total. One will be sat in the driver's seat, the other doing general stuff and keeping him company, covering meal and toilet breaks, etc. I would be pretty worried if I went up to the bridge during a voyage and there was no-one there.

[misskit]

Even with autopilot, it seems there would be another system to keep a ship from ramming something as large as a tanker!

[Shutree]

Even with autopilot, it seems there would be another system to keep a ship from ramming something as large as a tanker!

It was crowded out there, it is an anchorage for vessels going up the Humber. Apparently vessels at anchor can monitor other vessels and should be able to identify one on a collision course and call out to it. I'd guess the tanker was doing just that.

This guy seems to have some idea what he is talking about:

[taxexile]

North Sea tanker crash: An experienced sea captain’s early take.

Unusually, it is clear who was at fault


11 March 2025 1:19pm GMT

Tom Sharpe

Yesterday morning, a merchant vessel underway collided with a ship at anchor in the North Sea off the Humber resulting in two huge fires, maritime pollution incidents and both crews abandoning ship. Most crew survived and have now been recovered, but one is still missing. This should never have happened but it could have been a lot worse. I’ll try and explain both.

For background, the ship that was underway was the MV Solong, a Portuguese flagged “feeder ship” of 140 metres length and a carrying capacity of around 500 containers. This is quite small for a container ship: the MV Ever Given of Suez Canal fame was four hundred metres long and carried over 20,000 containers. There is nothing in the Solong’s ownership, flag, crew or insurance that would give rise to a suspicion of foul play. Even the route she was on, from Grangemouth to Rotterdam, has been done by her dozens of times in the last year or so. She did have 15 containers with sodium cyanide in them onboard but ships of this type, in fact all ships, routinely carry hazardous materials in accordance with the International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) code. Nothing unusual here.

The ship that was hit is perhaps more interesting. This is the MV Stena Immaculate, a US flagged tanker, 183 metres long and carrying 35 million litres (220,000 barrels) of Jet-A-1 aviation fuel for US military use. She is operated by the American company Crowley as part of the US Government Tanker Security Programme, intended to get more ships into the American registry. Needless to say, this quasi-military status has got conspiracy theorists’ tongues wagging.

But it shouldn’t. I’ve commented on a lot maritime incidents for the Telegraph in the last year or so, from the Ever Given grounding in the canal to the superyacht Bayesian capsize, the Baltimore bridge and HMS Chiddingfold collisions, the Royal New Zealand Navy’s grounding and then sinking, the USS Harry S Truman’s recent collision off Suez and so on. The cause of this one is as clear as any I’ve seen. It was Solong’s neglect of Rule Five of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (also known in the Royal Navy as “Rule of the Road”). Rule Five says (RN watchkeeping officers are required memorise Rules 1-19 word for word):

“Every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper look-out by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances and conditions so as to make a full appraisal of the situation and of the risk of collision.”

Solong didn’t do this and also managed to either ignore, or not have set up correctly, any number of radar or GPS based alarm systems that would alert her (miles in advance) to the risk of impending collision.


It seems that she may have sailed from harbour, disembarked her pilot, set the helm to auto using routing information saved from previous voyages then maintained the exact same course and speed for about nine hours before driving her bows into the Stena Immaculate’s port side just abaft the beam puncturing her fuel tanks on that side. There are reports of fog at the time but this means you would consider slowing down and you certainly wouldn’t pile through a busy anchorage in reduced visibility. And in any case, it’s pretty hard to miss a 140m long ship on radar.

The radar ought to have alerted the watch officer even if he or she wasn’t looking at it just then. What of the automated alarm systems? Were they set correctly or were they muted due to constant false alarms? This is not uncommon. While it’s clear that responsibility lies with the Solong, we will need the ship’s data recorder and subsequent investigation to determine exactly how.

As for this being a deliberate attack, I think that is highly unlikely. Any attempt to collide deliberately would have required micro course adjustments as the Solong approached the target which are not evident on the various marine tracking sites. The investigation won’t rule anything out and nor should it, but for me, the likelihood of this being an attack is very low.

It will be interesting to find out what the Stena Immaculate did as the risk of collision was building. Being at anchor she would expect other vessels to avoid her and she won’t have been keeping as alert a lookout as a ship under way – though again, automatic radar alarms should have alerted the duty watch. Her base assumption would have been that transiting vessels will keep clear, even at the last minute. Even if they somehow knew the Solong wasn’t going to alter, they would have needed about 40 minutes notice to weigh anchor and get out of the way – not realistic. Again, her bridge data recorder will be instructive in the minutes prior to the collision, and horrific after it.

Once the two ships collided at that speed and angle, a major fire and flood on both was almost guaranteed. Ship tracking suggests that the Solong was tangled with the Stena for a full four minutes, pushing her sideways from her anchorage as she decelerated. This would have been a nightmarish mix of violent deceleration (the first sign of trouble for most onboard), grinding metal and fires and floods breaking out. Whilst we can question the competence of the Solong’s bridge team prior to the incident, that both ships safely evacuated all people is impressive. Humber Coastguard should get credit here as it’s clear that their running of the incident was excellent and would have also saved lives. Controlling a situation like this is fraught as dozens of vessels, aircraft, lifeboats and even onlookers all jump on the radio and phones to try and “help”. Cutting through the noise to make accurate decisions with ships on fire and people in the water is not easy at all.

With nearly everyone safe, the next immediate concern is maritime pollution (Marpol). Whilst cyanide on one ship and aviation fuel on another doesn’t sound like a dream scenario, it could have been a lot worse. Both things disperse from water to atmosphere quite quickly, certainly compared to other hazardous materials and heavier oils. Both could still “cook off” which is why support ships have been withdrawn for now and the Solong is probably drifting and will need to be monitored. The situation is far from over but it’s already clear that in terms of what the ships were carrying, the Marpol bill could have been higher.


By now the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) will be on scene. They need to get there as fast as possible to gather perishable evidence where possible although looking at photos of both ships it’s not clear if much will be left that is of use. Data recorders might be recoverable but not for some time.

Although the MAIB arrive quickly, they take their time to report, normally over a year. This is because accidents like this always have a tail reaching some way back into the culture of the various organisations that needs to be examined in as much detail as what happened on the day. What was the safety culture in the Solong, how long had that crew been at sea and with what rest periods, how experienced were the master and bridge watchkeepers, what was the anti-collision set up on the bridge, why did their plan take them so close to a busy port and so on. Were any of the bridge team using their phones or other devices at the time? There will be a rich seam of cultural and systemic reasons predating why, on the day, they ignored Rule Five.

If it feels like incidents at sea are increasing, that may not in fact be the case. In 2022 and 2023 there were 6,000 incidents at sea globally, resulting in 67 total losses. So it happens a lot, we just don’t hear about it. Whilst the sort of macro statistics needed to prove trends one way or the other often lag by about a year, in general, they are slowly improving.

Attacks in the Red Sea and sabotage in the Baltic have raised awareness of the issues, but these are not accidents. Merchant mariners I know generally report a reduction in crew experience and in turn, competence, but this does sometimes feel as much like “not as good as in my day” syndrome as anything backed by hard evidence.

And we shouldn’t forget the parties who have a vested financial interest in painting a gloomy picture. The technology used to control and navigate ships is generally old and basic, certainly if you compare it to what’s available for your car these days. One day ships will operate in “full auto” much of the time – and indeed this is actually a simpler problem than making cars do so – but the merchant navies of the world are a long way from spending the money to make that happen. Besides, they do spend money training people to look out of the window or into the radar to stop it in the first place. Personally, I don’t think the sky is falling in but I’m happy to be proven wrong as the figures for this year mature.

This collision was an accident and unusually, it is clear who was at fault. The investigation will rule nothing out but I would put a very low probability of this having been an attack, despite the US vessel being linked to their Department of Defence.

But there is a clear message here nonetheless. This may not have been an attack, but attacks and reconnaissance for attacks are underway on a routine basis all around this sea-blind island nation. If this news wakes us up and makes us realise just how critically dependent we are on control of the waters around us, the safety of those who move our goods – and yes, in this case, important military supplies – and those who protect them, then so much the better.

In this case the fact that we have saved nearly every mariner and the pollution won’t be too bad is just the cherry on top.

Commander Tom Sharpe OBE served in the Royal Navy for 27 years, and commanded four different warships


© Telegraph Media Group Holdings Limited 2025

[harrybarracuda]

Another Exxon Valdez then.

No doubt the errant ship's owners will sue everyone else for "getting in its way" or something.

[cyrille]

Another Exxon Valdez then.

Is there any ​topic on which you do not spout complete and utter bollocks?

[Shutree]

Since no disclosure has been made, that I have seen, about the nationality of the Solong's skipper, I'm going to make a wild guess and suggest he is Russian. The government doesn't want to inspire the conspiracy theorists. It shouldn't be long before we find out. Probably a few bottles of vodka involved.

And I'm disappointed that no one enjoyed my Sound of Music quote.

[taxexile]

^^

101,000 ++ posts says it all.

[taxexile]

Since no disclosure has been made, that I have seen, about the nationality of the Solong's skipper, I'm going to make a wild guess and suggest he is Russian. The government doesn't want to inspire the conspiracy theorists. It shouldn't be long before we find out. Probably a few bottles of vodka involved.

Solong reportedly crewed by Filipino and Russian mariners
The cargo ship that collided with an oil tanker in the North Sea off the coast of England on Monday is said to be crewed by Russians and Filipinos.

Whitehall sources told BBC News that Russians and Filipinos amongst the crew of the Portuguese cargo ship.

5:22PM

[taxexile]

The flippers will be in down the galley washing up and the orcs will be up top getting drunk and making trouble.

[Bonecollector]

In my experience, once a vessel is in open water it's pretty standard to set autopilot at the start of a voyage, but there's always at least one officer on the bridge, usually at least two crew in total. One will be sat in the driver's seat, the other doing general stuff and keeping him company, covering meal and toilet breaks, etc. I would be pretty worried if I went up to the bridge during a voyage and there was no-one there.

and we know what happens when you even just forget ya binoculars!

They do have an avoidance system as well.

So, a bloody Russian captain then

[Edmond]

Captain of Solong container ship involved in North Sea crash is Russian national, company says

Captain of Solong container ship involved in North Sea crash is Russian national, company says | UK News | Sky News


Russia. The world champions of world trolling. 5555

The captain of the Solong - the container ship involved in the crash in the North Sea - is a Russian national, the vessel's owner has said.
The rest of the crew were Russian and Filipino nationals, according to German shipping company Ernst Russ.

It comes after police said a man had been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in connection with Monday's collision.

[Mendip]

And I'm disappointed that no one enjoyed my Sound of Music quote.

Is that what it was?

I just thought you'd been drinking.