Emergency incident in the North Sea: What we know - British coast March 11, 2025

A rescue cruiser ship [File: Frank Kahl/DGzRS via AFP]

By AFP - Agence France Presse

Emergency incident in the North Sea: What we know

By Helen ROWE

More firefighting ships were mobilized on Tuesday, a day after a cargo ship carrying sodium cyanide hit a tanker carrying aviation fuel chartered by the US military off the British coast.

Here's what we know about the incident involving the tanker Stena Immaculate and the container ship Solong, which triggered a major pollution alert on the east coast of England.

The Stena Immaculate was carrying 220,000 barrels of fuel, according to the maritime information service, Lloyd's List Intelligence.

It was anchored about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the port of Hull, in northeast England, when it was “struck by the container ship Solong,” said Crowley Maritime, the US shipping company that manages the tanker.

The alarm was raised at 0948 GMT.

Lloyd's List said the Solong was carrying 15 containers of sodium cyanide.

But the British authorities have not confirmed the presence of the compound, which releases flammable gas on contact with water. It has also not been confirmed whether there was a leak.

A large fire broke out and engulfed the two ships.

Crowley Maritime said the tanker was carrying jet-A1 fuel and the US Department of Defense confirmed that the US military had chartered the vessel.

The crew of the tanker “abandoned the vessel after several explosions on board,” said Crowley Maritime, which is based in Jacksonville, Florida.

The UK Coastguard said 36 people were rescued, and one was taken to hospital.

Stena Bulk, a Swedish company that owns the tanker, said that all the ship's crew were alive.

Thirteen of the Solong's 14 crew members were brought ashore, said the ship's owner, Ernst Russ, who is based in Germany. The search for the missing crew member was called off late Monday.

The Coast Guard said the search was “over”.

The latest BBC images showed a large hole in the side of the tanker and a huge cloud of thick black smoke billowing from the ship.

The two stationary ships were surrounded by smaller vessels that were putting out the fire.

The UK Coastguard was coordinating the emergency pollution operation after Crowley Maritime said the impact had “ruptured” the tanker and caused the fire.

After initial efforts to extinguish the fire, four other ships with firefighting capabilities were on their way to the scene, according to Dutch maritime services company Boskalis, which was tasked with rescuing the Stena.

The tanker would need to be “cooled down” before the fire could be put out, the company said.

The government's Marine Accident Investigation Branch said a team was already at the scene “gathering evidence” and assessing the “next steps”.

The investigation was being led by the US and Portuguese authorities, as the ships were flagged in their countries, said UK housing minister Matthew Pennycook.

Associated British Ports (ABP), which operates the ports of Hull and Immingham in the affected region, said it had halted all vessel movements in the Humber estuary, which flows into the North Sea.

The North Sea has busy shipping lanes, but accidents are relatively rare.

In October 2023, two cargo ships, the Verity and the Polesie, collided near the Heligoland Islands in Germany. Three people died and two others were reported missing.

On October 6, 2015, the cargo ship Flinterstar, carrying 125 tons of diesel and 427 tons of fuel oil, sank after colliding with the tanker Al Oraiq eight kilometers (five miles) off the Belgian coast.

A major oil spill hit the North Sea in January 1993, when the Liberian tanker Braer suffered engine damage en route from Norway to Canada.

It ran aground on Scotland's Shetland Islands and released 84,500 tons of crude oil.

David McFarlane, from the Maritime Risk and Safety consultancy, said that there are between 200 and 300 ship collisions worldwide every year, but most are just a “slight bump” in the harbor.

“The collision regulations (...) state that all ships must keep a proper lookout at all times. And something has gone wrong here because if you had kept a proper lookout, this collision would have been avoided,” McFarlane told AFP.

Once the flames have died down, investigators will look for the two ships' video data recorders - the equivalent of an airplane's “black box” data recorders.

They should contain radar information from the ships, as well as voice recordings from the bridge crews. McFarlane said this would help investigators find out if there was communication between the two ships.

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