Yesterday afternoon, 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.
Yesterday afternoon, 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.