A captain of a ship has been found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter after a crew member was declared deceased following a collision between a tanker and a container vessel in the North Sea in March 2025.
Today, Monday, 2 February 2026, following a three-week trial at the Old Bailey, Central Criminal Court, London, the captain of the Solong vessel, Vladimir Motin, 59-years-old, of Primorsky, St Petersburg, Russia, has been found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter.
On Monday, 10 March 2025, Humberside Police received a call at around 11am from the HM Coastguard alerting us that a collision had occurred between two vessels in the North Sea, approximately 10.2 miles off the coast of East Yorkshire, with a crew member reported missing.
A multi-agency rescue operation was launched and led by HM Coastguard from the Humber Operations Centre and Divisonal HQ on Limekiln Lane in Bridlington.
This resulted in all 23 crew members being safely rescued and accounted for from Stena Immaculate, and from the Solong, 13 of the 14 crew members were accounted for and also rescued. All were brought ashore to Grimsby Docks.
Bridington’s All Weather Lifeboat and crew were sent to the area.
Only one crew member, able seaman Mark Pernia, from the Solong was unaccounted for and after HM Coastguard carried out extensive searches to locate him, he was later declared deceased due to the length of time that had passed since the collision and the survivability within the extremely hostile environment.
An investigation was launched by Humberside Police, supported by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), to establish the circumstances of how the collision occurred, with detectives reviewing technical data, radio transmissions, as well as obtaining witness statements from everyone on board the two vessels.
Read more from Senior Investigating Officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Craig Nicholson: https://ow.ly/AA1950Y7Fv4
