Qualla: 2025 North Sea Ship Collision

2025 North Sea Ship Collision: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JPSS imagery: CSU/CIRA & NOAA/NESDIS, Public domain. A Filipino crewmember was missing. By the end of the day on 10 March 2025 he was presumed dead. His name was Mark Angelo Pernia, and he had a family in the Philippines waiting for him to come home from the North Sea. He never did. The container ship he was working aboard - the Solong, a 140-metre feeder flagged out of Madeira - had struck the US-flagged oil tanker Stena Immaculate at anchor off the East Yorkshire coast at 09:47 GMT, at a cruising speed of around 16.4 knots, into morning fog the Met Office had already warned about. Multiple explosions followed. Both ships caught fire and were abandoned. Thirty-six other people were pulled from the water. One man was not.

Image: JPSS imagery: CSU/CIRA & NOAA/NESDIS | Public domain

2025 North Sea Ship Collision: The Anchorage Off the Humber

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit kees torn, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Stena Immaculate, US-flagged and crewed entirely by twenty-three American nationals, was sitting at anchor waiting to enter the Port of Killingholme in Lincolnshire. In her sixteen secure cargo tanks: 220,000 barrels of Jet A-1 aviation fuel, loaded under a short-term charter...

Image: kees torn | CC BY-SA 2.0

2025 North Sea Ship Collision: The Collision

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Calanquee, CC BY-SA 4.0. At 09:47 GMT, Solong drove into Stena Immaculate at speed. Witnesses described a massive fireball. RNLI lifeboats launched from Bridlington, Mablethorpe, Skegness and Cleethorpes. A crew transfer vessel that happened to be in the area joined the rescue. Only one of the tanker's c...

Image: Calanquee | CC BY-SA 4.0

2025 North Sea Ship Collision: The Captain, the Old Bailey, the Verdict

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Calanquee, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 11 March, Humberside Police opened a criminal investigation. They arrested Solong's 59-year-old Russian captain on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter. The Solong's safety record was already unflattering: in July 2024, Irish inspectors had logged ten outstanding deficie...

Image: Calanquee | CC BY-SA 4.0

2025 North Sea Ship Collision: Whose Sea, Whose Fuel, Whose Birds

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Calanquee, CC BY-SA 4.0. The aftermath ran in three currents at once. The legal one ended at the Old Bailey. The diplomatic one began on 11 March, with the United States, Portugal and the UK opening joint investigations through the Marine Accident Investigation Branch. The environmental one was the slowe...

Image: Calanquee | CC BY-SA 4.0