The detained captain of the container ship that collided off the UK coast with a tanker carrying US military fuel on Monday is a Russian national, the vessel’s owner has said.
Port inspection records also showed a number of deficiencies identified on the Solong container vessel over the past year, including issues with its alarms, navigational systems and life-saving appliances.
Ernst Russ, the Germany-based owner of the Solong, said on Wednesday that these issues had been “rectified” and confirmed the nationality of the 59-year-old man who captained the vessel.
He was arrested by Humberside Police on Tuesday on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter after the Solong collided with the anchored Stena Immaculate tanker in the North Sea.
The company added that the Solong’s crew of 14 mariners included a mix of Russians and Filipinos. Authorities have said one of the crew is now presumed dead while the others, along with the 23 crew members of the Stena Immaculate, have returned safely to shore.
The 23 mariners on the US-flagged Stena Immaculate were US citizens, in line with the country’s regulations, according to a person familiar with the matter.
A US Coast Guard spokesperson said on Wednesday they could not rule out “foul play” and were deploying investigators from the USCG and National Transportation Safety Board to the UK.
Russian and Filipino crews are common in commercial shipping. More than a tenth of the 1.9mn seafarers globally were from Russia in 2021, while 13 per cent were from the Philippines, according to the most recent data shared by the International Transport Workers’ Federation.
After the Solong captain was arrested, authorities continued to investigate the reasons for the crash off the east Yorkshire coast as rescue teams also raced to mitigate the environmental impact.
On Tuesday, Downing Street said that “foul play” did not appear to be involved.
Information from vessel-tracking site MarineTraffic appeared to show the Solong ploughing into the Stena Immaculate, which was carrying up to 220,000 barrels of fuel for the US military, while the tanker was at anchor.
An inspection of the Portugal-flagged Solong in Dublin in July identified 10 issues, including alarms that were “inadequate”, according to records published by the Paris MoU, a multinational organisation covering 23 European countries.
Other life-saving items such as fire doors and “openings in fire-resisting divisions” were “not as required”, the inspections found.
A later inspection in October in Scotland’s Grangemouth found a smaller total of two issues, including lifebuoys that were “not properly marked”.
Ernst Russ said that “all deficiencies that were detected during routine port state control inspections of the Solong back in 2024 were promptly rectified”.
The Solong, which had begun to drift southwards following the crash, was now being held offshore by a tug, said the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s chief executive Virginia McVea on Wednesday morning.
Following the outbreak of a fire apparently caused by the Stena Immaculate’s fuel, McVea added that there were now no visible flames on board the tanker and that fires on board the Solong have “greatly reduced”.
She said that a salvage operation would board the vessels once it was safe to do so, adding: “HM Coastguard’s counter pollution and salvage team has a comprehensive counter pollution response in place should it be required.”
Humberside Police said it was working with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency as it investigated the cause of the collision on Tuesday.
