Closing summary
The crews of an oil tanker and a cargo ship are “safe and accounted for” with one person taken to hospital after the vessels collided in the North Sea, with jet fuel reported to have been released, a maritime company has said. Crowley, the shipping company that manages the MV Stena Immaculate, said there were “multiple explosions onboard” when the oil tanker suffered a ruptured cargo tank.
Graham Stuart, the MP for Beverley and Holderness, says the transport secretary has told him that only one person has been hospitalised following the incident. “The other 36 mariners across both crews are safe and accounted for,” he said on X.
An emergency operation was launched after the collision on Monday morning. A helicopter was scrambled and lifeboats launched from four different bases along the coast. The collision happened near the Humber estuary. According to the ship tracking tool Vesselfinder, the US-flagged tanker was at anchor at the time of the incident. It had departed from a Greek port in the Aegean Sea and was heading towards Hull, according to the Marine Traffic website. The Solong was destined for Rotterdam.
US logistics firm Crowley, the operator and joint owner of the MV Stena Immaculate, said the tanker was carrying jet fuel. The vessel was hit by the Solong in the North Sea at approximately 10am today. In a statement, the Florida-based company said: “A fire occurred as a result of the allision, and fuel was reported released.
The Stena Immaculate tanker was on a short-term charter to the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command when it was struck on Monday while anchored off north-east England, a US military spokesperson told Reuters. The tanker was operated by US logistics group Crowley. Crowley wrote on X that the tanker, carrying a cargo of Jet-A1 fuel, was anchored near Hull off the North Sea coast when it was struck by the Portuguese-flagged 9,322 dwt container ship Solong.
The Solong vessel, which was involved in a collision off the coast of Britain on Monday, is carrying 15 containers of sodium cyanide among other cargo, according to a report from maritime data provider Lloyd’s List Intelligence. The container vessel was also transporting an unknown quantity of alcohol, the casualty report – an assessment of incidents at sea – said, citing a message from the local coastguard.
A spokesperson for Greenpeace UK said it was monitoring the situation “very closely” but that it was too early to assess the extent of any environmental damage.
Two maritime security sources said there was no indication of any malicious activity or other actors involved in a crash on Monday between a tanker carrying jet fuel and a cargo vessel off the coast of England.
The Marine Accident Investigation Branch sent investigators to Grimsby following the crash between two vessels in the North Sea. A spokesperson said: “The Marine Accident Investigation Branch has deployed a team to Grimsby following the collision of the Portuguese-registered container ship Solong and the US-registered oil tanker Stena Immaculate which collided in the North Sea this morning.”
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The Solong vessel, which was involved in a collision off the coast of Britain on Monday, is carrying 15 containers of sodium cyanide among other cargo, according to a report from maritime data provider Lloyd’s List Intelligence.
The container vessel was also transporting an unknown quantity of alcohol, the casualty report – an assessment of incidents at sea – said, citing a message from the local coastguard.
The UK coastguard authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.
