A 59-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of manslaughter, the police in northern England mentioned, after a container ship crashed into an oil tanker within the North Sea a day earlier, leaving one crew member lacking and presumed lifeless.
The container ship, the Solong, struck the Stena Immaculate, an anchored oil tanker that was carrying jet gasoline and was being operated by the U.S. Navy on the time, officers mentioned. The episode occurred off the coast of northeastern England on Monday morning, setting off a sequence of explosions and engulfing each vessels in flames.
One crew member from the Solong was lacking, and an in depth search was known as off on Monday evening, Britain’s Coast Guard mentioned. The remainder of the crew members on each vessels had been introduced safely to shore.
The Humberside Police in England mentioned in a statement that it had begun a legal investigation into the reason for the crash. Craig Nicholson, the detective chief superintendent, mentioned the division had subsequently “arrested a 59-year-old man on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in reference to the collision.”
It was unclear was connection the arrested man needed to both ship. In Britain, there are tight authorized restrictions on what might be reported a couple of legal case as soon as an arrest has been made, geared toward defending the accused individual’s proper to a good trial. The police mentioned they had been nonetheless working to ascertain the total circumstances of the crash, however by Tuesday afternoon, a fuller image of the chain of occasions had begun to emerge.
Mike Kane, Britain’s transport minister, instructed Parliament on Tuesday that the Stena Immaculate tanker had been anchored about 13 nautical miles off the coast of England close to the mouth of the River Humber when it was struck.
“Whether or not there was foul play is, I feel, hypothesis; there is no such thing as a proof to counsel that in the intervening time,” Mr. Kane mentioned, including that the British authorities was in contact with its American and Portuguese counterparts.
“Search-and-rescue operations for the lacking sailor continued all through yesterday, however had been known as off yesterday night on the level at which the probabilities of their survival had, sadly, considerably diminished,” Mr. Kane mentioned, including, “Our working assumption is, very sadly, that the sailor is deceased.”
The tanker, owned by Crowley, a logistics firm primarily based in Florida, had been chartered on a short-term basis to serve U.S. authorities operations.
Whereas the hearth on the Stena Immaculate had been extinguished, the blaze continued on the Solong on Tuesday. Ernst Russ, a Hamburg-based transport firm that owns the Solong, mentioned in an announcement on Tuesday that it had not been carrying any sodium cyanide, regardless of preliminary studies that was the case.
Mr. Kane famous in his assertion to Parliament that it was nonetheless working to find out what cargo had been on board the Solong however that “counter-pollution measures and belongings are already in place, and each vessels are being carefully monitored for structural integrity.”
A spokesman for Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, mentioned the Marine Accident Investigation Department will conduct the preliminary evaluation of the crash and its trigger.
Stephen Citadel contributed reporting.
