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Police investigating the collision of two ships at the North Sea arrested a 59 -year -old man suspected of serious negligence on Monday.
Humberside police said they were working with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to establish why the Solong container ship collided with an oil tanker Carrying American military fuel, the Immaculate STENA.
“Following requests taken by my team, we arrested a 59 -year -old man suspected of serious negligence. collision“Said the chief superintendent of the detective Craig Nicholson. “This follows the conclusion of research operations by HM Coastguard for the missing crew of the Solong.”
“The arrested man remains in detention at present while investigations are underway, and we continue to speak with all the persons involved to establish all the circumstances of the incident,” he added.
The Solong was still burning and had derived to the south after colliding with the immaculate oil tanker anchored from the east coast of Yorkshire on Monday morning, Mike Kane, the British maritime minister in Parliament on Tuesday afternoon.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said that she had been informed, following a meeting with the MCA, that “the first indications suggest that the two ships should now remain afloat”.
The Solong had to be towed away from the shore so that the recovery operations can begin, she added.
Meanwhile, a fire aboard the Immaculate Stena oil tanker had “considerably decreased,” the Coast Guard of the United Kingdom said on Tuesday.
But the ship, which transported up to 220,000 barrels of fuel for the American army, suffered a break in a freight tank, according to Crowley, which manages the ship.
Counter-pollution measures have been put in place and the two ships were closely monitored for structural integrity, Kane said. The accident, which also left a member of the alleged dead crew, feared to turn into an environmental disaster.
The search mission of a solong crew member had been canceled and it was “our working hypothesis” that the sailor had died, said Kane. HM Coastguard added that the other 36 sailors of the two ships were brought safely on the ground. He also said that a crew member had not been transported to hospital but had been treated on the scene, contrary to what the coast guard said before.
The jet fuel transported by the Immaculate STENA, owned by marine STENA marine services to Sweden, was the source of the fire, added Kane.
The authorities always investigated how the collision occurred. Marine traffic information, the ship’s monitoring site, seemed to show the Solong, belonging to Ernst Russ, based in Germany, plowing the Immaculate Sténa at high speed while the oil tanker was in mooring.
“For a ship, meeting another is incredible[and]This is where the mystery lies, “said Martyn Boyers, Managing Director of Port of Grimsby East, who helped rescue efforts. The recovery of ships and environmental cleaning “were going to be a lot of work,” he added.
Ernst Russ denied previous relationships which claimed that the solong containers were loaded with sodium cyanide, a potentially very dangerous chemical. He said the ship, capable of transporting 803 20 -foot containers, had “four empty containers who previously contained the dangerous chemical and this containers will continue to be monitored”.
Melanie ONN, MP for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, said local residents were concerned about the potential environmental impact, adding that volunteers were identified that could help save fauna if necessary. She said questions were also raised about the impact on air quality and that it could become a problem.
But the UK Health Security Agency had advised public health risk on the shore “currently considered very low,” said HM Coastguard.
He added that the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also “confirmed that air quality at ground level is currently at normal levels for weather conditions”.
