North Sea crash captain triggered fire, rescue operation and ‘avoidable death’, UK trial heard

Smoke rises from damaged containers on the deck of the MV Solong cargo ship in the North Sea, off the coast of Withernsea, east of England, on March 11, 2025, after it collided with the MV Stena Immaculate tanker on March 10. Photo / Paul Ellis, AFP

The Russian captain of a cargo ship which hit a tanker in the North Sea caused the “avoidable death of a seaman”, prosecutors told his British trial today.

Vladimir Motin, 59, “did nothing to avoid the collision” which led to the presumed death of the crew member, London’s Old Bailey court heard on the first day of evidence in his trial.

Motin, from Saint Petersburg, faces one count of gross negligence manslaughter after Filipino sailor Mark Angelo Pernia, 38, was lost at sea following the incident in March.

While United Kingdom authorities quickly ruled out foul play, the Russian was blamed for the collision between the Portuguese-flagged Solong he captained and the Stena Immaculate, a tanker chartered by the US military which had been anchored at sea.

The collision at speed set both vessels ablaze and triggered a massive offshore rescue operation.

Motin has pleaded not guilty and has been held in pre-trial custody.

Prosecutor Tom Little told the jury that despite being on “an obvious collision course” with the Stena Immaculate, Motin “did not deviate his vessel from its path and the impending catastrophe that lay ahead”.

Pernia “would still be alive if it was not for the grossly negligent conduct of the man in the dock”, he added.

“The captain owed him a duty of care to keep him safe and the defendant breached that duty of care and caused his death,” Little said, noting Motin was on “sole watch duty at the time”.

Motin also sent his wife a WhatsApp conversation to tell her “there had been a disaster” and that he will be “guilty”.

His wife advised him to “think of an alibi and not to take the blame”, the prosecution said.

Jurors heard Motin was “highly trained” in seafaring. A sailor since 1985, he first became a captain in 2005 and had captained Solong for 15 years.

“He could, and should, have acted differently,” Little argued.

Visibility on the day of the accident, March 10, was “patchy” according to a report by the UK’s Maritime Accidents Investigations Branch.

‘What just hit us?’

At the speed he was travelling, Little maintained that Motin “would have seen the Stena Immaculate approximately 12 minutes” before the crash and the tanker “would have been visible on the radar 36 minutes before the collision”.

The jury was shown video and audio CCTV of the moments after the collision, in which loud screaming and emergency alarms can be heard.

An American seaman aboard the Stena Immaculate could be heard to say: “Holy shit, what just hit us?”

Crew members tried to locate Pernia before abandoning ship, but could not access many parts due to the rapidly spreading fire.

The front of the ship where Pernia was working “had been completely destroyed by the fire”, Little said.

The accident caused thousands of barrels of jet fuel to spill from the Stena Immaculate.

The Solong was carrying 15 containers of plastic pellets and more than 16 tonnes of the nurdles were removed from beaches in northeastern Lincolnshire in the aftermath, according to the local council.

Pernia was never found, with search parties eventually called off 12 hours later at “the limit of his survivability in the water”, Little said.

The owners of both ships have lodged civil suits against each other, which are expected to be heard in October.

-Agence France-Presse