Ship’s captain guilty over fatal North Sea crash

A sea captain has been found guilty of killing a crew member when his ship crashed into an oil tanker off the coast of Yorkshire.

Russian Vladimir Motin had been on sole watch duty when the Solong collided with the Stena Immaculate anchored near the Humber Estuary at 9.47am last March 10.

Mark Angelo Pernia, 38, who was working on the Solong’s bow, died instantly in the fire, although his body was never recovered.

The Filipino family man had a five-year-old child at the time of the collision, but he never met his second child, who was born two months after his death.

Following an Old Bailey trial, a jury deliberated for eight hours to find Motin, 59, from St Petersburg, guilty of his manslaughter by gross negligence.

Motin appeared emotionless as he heard the jury’s verdict on Monday and was remanded into custody to be sentenced on Thursday.

Prosecutor Tom Little KC revealed to jurors that Mr Pernia’s wife have been about seven months pregnant at the time of his death.

He said she lives in a remote area in the Philippines and will need to make arrangements to travel somewhere with good internet access so that she can watch sentencing proceedings.

Detective Chief Superintendent Craig Nicholson told the Press Association is was a “simple, senseless tragedy”.

He said: “It’s a miracle that there weren’t more fatalities or serious injuries.

“Similarly, this could have been a huge environmental catastrophe. The Solong burned for eight days following the collision.

“There were people on the deck of the Stena Immaculate at the point of impact. One crew member was up a mast changing a light fitting.”

Previously, the court heard the Solong, which was 130 metres long and weighed 7,852 gross tonnes, had departed from Grangemouth in Scotland at 9.05pm on March 9 bound for the port of Rotterdam in Holland.

With a 14-strong crew, it was carrying mainly alcoholic spirits and some hazardous substances, including empty but unclean sodium cyanide containers.

The Stena Immaculate, with a crew of 23, was 183.2 metres long and was transporting more than 220,000 barrels of JetA1 high-grade aviation fuel from Greece to the UK.

With both ships laden with flammable cargo, the danger in the event of a collision was obvious, jurors were told.

Motin was responsible for multiple failures in the lead-up to the tragedy and then lied about what took place on the bridge, it was alleged.

The Stena Immaculate was visible on the Solong’s radar display for 36 minutes before impact, yet Motin did nothing to steer away from the collision course, the prosecution said.

He failed to summon help, slow down, sound the alarm to alert crews of both ships, or instigate a crash stop as a last resort, the prosecution said.

Dramatic CCTV footage captured the moment both ships were consumed in a massive blaze ignited by leaking fuel from the Stena Immaculate.

The shocked crew about the US tanker reacted instantly, saying: “Holy shit… what just hit us… a container ship… this is no drill, this is no drill, fire fire fire, we have had a collision.”

Jurors heard a lengthy silence from the bridge of the Solong before it crashed into the oil tanker at a speed of 15.2 knots. A full minute elapsed before Motin was heard to react.

Motin and the remaining Solong crew abandoned ship and were brought ashore in Grimsby where the defendant messaged his wife, saying he would be “guilty”.

In his defence, Motin denied he had been asleep or had left his post on the bridge.

He told jurors that he held off taking action when he saw the Stena Immaculate dead ahead because it was moving slowly but unpredictably.

He then made a “mistake” and pressed the wrong button when he tried to take the Solong out of autopilot and steer away from one nautical mile away.

Not realising the error, he told jurors that he proceeded to stop and restart the steering gear to no effect, thinking the Solong could have developed a rudder fault experienced by sister ship, Sanskip Express.

Motin said he decided against a crash stop because he feared the Solong would collide with the accommodation block, killing the American tanker crew.

He told jurors: “I thought the distance to stop is not enough. I put life of American crew in danger if I hit accommodation.”

The prosecution suggested Motin had lied about what happened to “get back to his wife” in Russia and gave differing accounts to police and jurors.

Prosecutor Julia Faure Walker had told jurors: “It would have been blindingly obvious to him that he had pressed the wrong button, and how to rectify it if that is what happened.

“The reality is that he did nothing to avoid collision. Instead he launched into a problem that had never occurred on the Solong.

“There were no mechanical or electronic difficulties on the Solong. The rudder was working. The only thing that was not working on March 10 2025 was the man in the dock.”

She said jurors may conclude that Motin had a “lax attitude” and “thought he knew better than anyone else”.

She pointed to the fact that he had switched off the Solong’s bridge navigation watch alert system (BNWAS), which was designed to ensure there is someone physically on the bridge and awake.

The prosecution said his failures were “exceptionally bad, they amount to gross negligence”.

Following the verdict, Michael Gregory, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “This was a tragic and entirely avoidable death of a member of crew caused by truly, exceptionally bad negligence.

“Mark Pernia was just going about his day-to-day work.

“It is with great sadness for his family that his body has never been found.

“Vladimir Motin was an experienced vessel master who had captained the Solong for 15 years – but this time his actions fell gravely below the standards expected.

“It is extremely fortunate that no one else was killed.”