Russian container ship captain sentenced to six years in prison Explosive collision A crewman was killed in the North Sea off the Yorkshire coast.
Vladimir Motin, 59, was told by an Old Bailey judge that he was a “serious accident waiting to happen” as he was jailed for manslaughter by gross negligence.
A court heard that Motin failed to take any action to prevent his vessel Solong from colliding with the stationary oil tanker Stena Immaculate.
It caused an explosion and 38-year-old Filipino national Marc Angelo Pernia died instantly in the resulting fire. His body never recovered.
Pernea had a five-year-old child at the time of the collision, but he never met his second child, who was born two months after his death.
On Thursday, Mr Justice Andrew Baker said Motin’s failure to exercise proper supervision amounted to a wholesale failure of duty over a long period of time.
During the trial, Motin claimed he pressed the wrong button when he tried to switch off the autopilot and steer away from the tanker in the minutes before the crash. He denied that he was sleeping or that he had left his post on the bridge.
The judge said Motin’s account was “highly troubling”, “improbable”, “highly improbable” and “worse still”.
He said the basic facts of the collision “point to a vessel unaware of the vessel ahead” and that was the “most likely” explanation.
The prosecution said Motin failed to keep a proper lookout for an extended period of time and then failed to sound the alarm, call for help or warn crew members of the impending disaster.
Jailing Motin, from St Petersburg, the judge told him: “You are a serious accident waiting to happen.”
The veteran sailor “showed a blatant disregard for the enormous danger to life” and fell victim to his own complacency and arrogance, the judge said.
Motin is there Found guilty Monday’s jury found gross negligence manslaughter.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, Pernea’s widow, Liesel, said she was left with no compensation for her loss and the pain she had caused her young family.
In mitigation, James Leonard KC expressed the defendant’s shame at what had happened, his sympathies to the Pernia family and his vow never to go to sea again. Leonard highlighted Motin’s “unblemished” previous record: “It’s really a violation of his conduct.”
The judge said Pernia’s death was “entirely avoidable” and the blame rested squarely on the defendant. Solong and other members of the crew of the Stena Immaculate may have died, and the crash caused massive destruction of the cargo.
Earlier, the court heard that the Solong, 130 meters long and 7,852 gross tonnes, left Grangemouth in Scotland for Rotterdam in the Netherlands on 9 March 2025 at 9.05pm.
With a 14-strong crew, it carried mainly alcoholic spirits and some dangerous substances, including empty but unclean sodium cyanide containers.
Stena Immaculate, 183 meters long and carrying more than 220,000 barrels of JetA1 high-grade jet fuel with a crew of 23, is transporting from Greece to the UK.
Jurors were told that as the two ships were loaded with flammable cargo, the risk of collision was obvious.
CCTV footage captured the moment two ships went up in flames after a fuel leak from the Stena Immaculate caught fire.
Shocked crew members on board the US tanker immediately reacted, saying: “Holy shit … we just got hit … a container ship … it’s not a drill, it’s not a drill, fire, fire, fire, we’ve had a collision.”
Jurors heard a long silence from Solong Bridge before it hit the oil tanker at 15.2 knots. A minute passed before Mothin heard him respond.
