Russian Captain Sentenced to 6 Years for Fatal North Sea Collision

A Russian ship captain was sentenced to six years in prison on Thursday for the manslaughter of a Filipino crew member killed in a fiery collision between his cargo vessel and an anchored oil tanker in the North Sea last year.

Vladimir Motin, 59, from St. Petersburg, received the sentence at London's Old Bailey court following his conviction for gross negligence manslaughter in the death of Mark Angelo Pernia, 38. The incident occurred at 9:47 a.m. on March 10, 2025, when Motin's ship, the Solong, struck the Stena Immaculate about 14 nautical miles northeast of Spurn Head, off the Yorkshire coast near the Humber Estuary. Pernia, working on the Solong's bow at the time, died instantly in the resulting blaze, and his body was never recovered. He left behind a wife, who was seven months pregnant, and a five-year-old child; their second child was born two months after his death.

The Solong, a 130-meter container ship weighing 7,852 gross tons with a crew of 14, had departed Grangemouth, Scotland, the previous evening at 9:05 p.m., bound for Rotterdam, Netherlands. It carried mainly alcoholic spirits and some hazardous materials, including empty but unclean sodium cyanide containers....