Sea captain found guilty of killing crew member in North Sea crash with US oil tanker

A Russian ship captain has been found guilty of a fatal North Sea crash.

Vladimir Motin, 59, was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter after crashing his container vessel, the Solong, into the Stena Immaculate, an anchored US oil tanker, near the Humber Estuary last March.

Both vessels were laden with flammable goods, and were engulfed in the resulting blaze.

Filipino crew member, Mark Angelo Pernia, 38, who was on the bow of the Portuguese-flagged Solong, was killed in the collision.

His body has never been found.

Motin, from St Petersburg, had been on sole watch duty.

During his trial at the Old Bailey, he told jurors he made a “mistake” and pressed the wrong button when he tried to take the Solong out of autopilot, and efforts to restart the steering gear had no effect.

But the prosecution contended that all navigational systems were operational, and the captain’s claims of rudder failure were baseless.

Prosecutor Tom Little told jurors at ‍the start of the trial last month that Motin did “absolutely nothing” to prevent the collision.

The captain even disabled the Bridge Navigational Watch Alarm System, the prosecution said, leaving him as the sole eyes and ears of the ship, contrary to normal safety protocols.

Yet Motin didn’t call for help, raise the alarm, alert the crew of either ship, nor instigate a crash stop as a last resort, the court heard.

The jury were also shown, using data from the Solong’s black box, that there were no adjustments to the vessel’s course or speed as disaster neared.

Mr Little said the two vessels had been on a collision course for ‌more than 30 minutes before ⁠the deadly impact.

For 12 of those minutes, the Stena Immaculate would’ve been visible with the naked eye, yet there was a lengthy silence from the bridge of the Solong ahead of the impact, and a full minute elapsed before Motin was heard to react.

The captain denied being asleep, or leaving his post, and said that there was not enough room to attempt a crash stop, claiming it would have endangered those inside the accommodation block of the American tanker.

But his claims about pressing the wrong button and a faulty rudder were dismissed as fiction.

Prosecutor Julia Faure told the court: “It would have been blindingly obvious to him that he had pressed the wrong button, and how to rectify it, if that is what happened.

“The reality is that he did nothing to avoid collision. Instead he launched into a problem that had never occurred on the Solong.

“There were no mechanical or electronic difficulties on the Solong. The rudder was working. The only thing that was not working on March 10, 2025, was the man in the dock.”

The Russian’s defence was further undermined by messages he sent in the aftermath of the disaster.

Coming ashore, he messaged his wife that he would be found “guilty”. She told him to think of an alibi, and to say that he had not seen the other ship on his controls.

When he was cautioned and the charge read to him on 14 March last year, he responded: “I didn’t do it intentionally, the killing.”

Motin betrayed no emotion as he heard the jury’s verdict. He has been remanded into custody, to await sentencing on Thursday.

Michael Gregory of the Crown Prosecution Service said: “This was a tragic, and entirely avoidable death of a member of crew caused by truly, exceptionally bad negligence.

“Vladimir Motin was an experienced vessel master who had captained the Solong for 15 years – but this time his actions fell gravely below the standards expected.

“His failure to act, despite clear and sustained warnings, amounted to a gross breach of duty and led to fatal consequences. It is extremely fortunate that no one else was killed.”

Mr Pernia is survived by his wife and two young children. He never met his second child, who was born two months after his death.

The Solong and its crew of 14 were sailing from Grangemouth, Scotland, to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, with a cargo mainly comprising alcoholic spirits and some hazardous substances.

The Stena Immaculate, with a crew of 23, was transporting more than 220,000 barrels of JetA1 high-grade aviation fuel from Greece to the UK.

Dramatic footage captured the moment of the collision.

The shocked crew of the US tanker were heard to say: “Holy shit… what just hit us… a container ship… this is no drill, this is no drill, fire fire fire, we have had a collision.”