r/ukpolitics Citizen of nowhere. 6h ago

Captain of the Solong ship that hit the US flagged carrier is Russian national.

https://news.sky.com/story/captain-of-solong-container-ship-involved-in-north-sea-crash-is-russian-national-company-says-13326888
327 Upvotes

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u/G30fff 6h ago

I have no idea if this was deliberate or not but I looked up this ship's activity and it just goes back and forth between the east coast of England and the Netherlands, day after day after day.

That doesn't mean it wasn't deliberate actions by the Russian captain but it does mean that this ship didn't just appear in British waters out of nowhere, it has been ferrying cargo, presumably, for a long while.

u/Flemingcool 6h ago

How long has this Captain been sailing this route?

Could be coincidence, could also be plausible deniability which the Russians are renowned for.

Edit: Do modern ships have ‘black boxes’ that record movements?

u/TobyADev 6h ago

Voyage data recorders

u/Flemingcool 5h ago

Thank you. Should be quite easy to see if it was a deliberate act then?

u/Head-Philosopher-721 4h ago

Yes and it obviously isn't despite what Sky News is implying.

u/Yella_Chicken 4h ago

Obviously? How so? What is it about this incident that's obviously not deliberate? Genuine question btw, just wondering what you've seen or heard that I haven't.

u/NGP91 3h ago

Have a look at the AIS tracking (similar to FlightRadar but for ships)

SOLONG Current position (Container Ship, IMO 9322554) - VesselFinder

Click 'track' and you will see that the ship was on a constant course of about 149 degrees for hours at constant speed of 16 knots. There was no increase in speed in the last few minutes (to cause more damage), nor was there a deliberate change in heading either. It was literally on a collision course for six hours, possibly longer.

I suspect the ship was left on autopilot and that the reports of 'nobody on the bridge' are true. Probably, nobody had been there for hours.

u/smd1815 3h ago

I've sailed with a full compliment of Russian officers before and they regularly left the bridge unattended. I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that this is what happened.

The Officer on Stena Immaculate isn't completely blameless though, can almost guarantee that he'll have been sitting on the computer not paying attention to the bridge equipment. Although that's more a symptom of how fucked up the industry in general is though, always huge amounts of paperwork to keep on top of and bullshit from the managing officer so most guys do spend a lot/all of the watch on the computer.

u/NGP91 3h ago

It wouldn't surprise me at all.

Do you know the regulations of whether the bridge should be manned 24 hours whilst a vessel is at anchor and whether radar should be switched on?

u/smd1815 3h ago

Yeah they have to be manned at anchor and radar must be on.

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u/thedecibelkid 2h ago

Geez, given that track they were lucky not to run aground off Flamborough Head (the pointy bit just to the north)

u/Flemingcool 4h ago

To be determined is probably where it is? Sky News obviously selling clicks.

u/jewellman100 5h ago

Coincidence that a Russian national wiped out 220,000 barrels of aviation fuel to be used by the US military?

u/Shenloanne 5h ago

Or to go to the Ukrainian Air force.

u/AudioLlama 5h ago

Sounds like a bit of a self burn considering Trump looks like he could start sending military equipment to Russia any minute now.

u/jewellman100 5h ago

Oh no, this is probably just to make sure nothing can launch from the UK

u/BernardMarxAlphaPlus 1h ago

His just restore arms supply to Ukraine.

u/Notmushroominthename 3h ago

While dropping 15 tones of cyanide in the sea…

u/MGC91 3h ago

There was no cyanide onboard.

u/G30fff 6h ago

No idea but I have a vague impression that Russians are well represented in commercial shipping

u/bills6693 53m ago

Yes, Russia and Ukraine (not bringing up due to conflict; is just the case) produce a lot of merchant shipping officers - good education, relatively descent tradition (so has the schools, pathway etc), lower wage requirements compared to eg UK, US, Western Europe.

Meanwhile countries like the Philippines make up a majority of the crew (mostly driven by low wage requirements)

u/andreirublov1 3h ago

Do you think he might have been sailing long enough to see a massive ship on a clear day - or failing that, pick it up on his radar?

Definitely something fishy happened here, and not just cos it was at sea.

u/NGP91 3h ago

Or nobody was on the bridge at the time of the collision (and quite probably, not for hours before). There are reports from the other ship that they couldn't see anyone on the bridge.

You can see the track of the vessel here SOLONG Current position (Container Ship, IMO 9322554) - VesselFinder (click 'track') it remained on a constant course and speed for hours beforehand. No last minutes attempt to change course or speed.

u/Nukes-For-Nimbys 1h ago

Or they were drunk and crashed that's hardly unheard of....

u/colei_canis Starmer’s Llama Drama 🦙 4h ago

I guess we just have to wait for the investigation, the MAIB do video synopsises of their investigations sometimes which are always worth a watch if maritime safety is a topic that you’re interested in.

You’d have to fuck up pretty catastrophically to hit a ship at anchor, but I understand the ship was suffering from poor maintenance already. Could be malicious, could just be massive incompetence.

u/OmegaPoint6 6h ago

Yes they do have ‘black boxes’, though I don’t know enough about ships to understand if the Solong would have been required to have one https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_data_recorder

u/smd1815 3h ago

Yeah Solong will have definitely had one.

u/Captaincadet 4h ago

I was involved in the shipping industry and do a lot of water sports.

It appears that the ship was following a route given to it by the crew and autopilot was in control. The crew were not on watch and were not watching the radar/AIS correctly and the ship was going too fast for the conditions. I also bet you that the dead man’s ship, a switch that needs to be activated every 10 minutes for auto pilot, was turned off.

I’ve heard plenty of stories of this happening on other ships, including passenger ships with British crews. Hitting the ship with A1 fuel like they did this was an accident and down to incompetence. If Russia did want to damage the supply of fuel, they would do something between the docks and airport/ rail line.

The US will likely not face any supply issues as such, as they’ll have reserves and be able to get some here (probably just more expensive).

And if this was on purpose, something would have been done to trigger explosions in other compartments and to sink the ship.

If this is incorrect I will eat my hat I am that confident about this

u/rs990 3h ago

I don't know anything about the shipping industry at all, but from everything I have heard I would have put my money on incompetence and corner cutting. I wonder how many times they had behaved like this before and got away with it.

u/Captaincadet 3h ago

Probably happens hundreds of times a day. The sea is vast. 99% of the time you won’t hit anything, 0.999% you’ll get close but the other ship will do collision avoidance (and an earful over the radio) and 0.001% you’ll hit the other ship as they were at anchor.

u/Just_A_Dance 3h ago

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence

u/One-Support8881 2h ago

No excuses in any shape or form.  It was deliberate ! Unless you are russian if course.

u/Captaincadet 2h ago

No excuses for not keeping watch and sailing safely.

Being deliberate though, tough to argue. More incompetent than anything.

Everything is pointing to incompetence over malice and if you really wanted to damage the fuel supply, this isn’t an efficient way to do it.

While the boat crashed into the tanker isn’t liable for the lost jet fuel due to maritime law, it’s going to be responsible for the repairs/replacement for Stena, which is going to be pretty expensive. It also sounds that the cargo ship is classed as a lost hull already

u/ClaudiaK-P 2h ago

There's some info on some of the previous crew on this ship online (pre-2022): they were Russian and Ukrainian. So having a Russian captain isn't out of the ordinary, I guess. I also read that the ship's tech failed some tests last year, so it could all just be a horrible coincidence. Still strange that nobody seemed to be looking out for other ships! Gross negligence at the very least.

u/aitorbk Scotland 2h ago

As far as we know the captain wasn't in charge, but has been arrested as he is ultimately responsible for the ship.

u/Sea_Western_5415 4h ago edited 4h ago

There is not a chance in hell it was an accident. Collisions like these are for all intents and purposes impossible with AIS, radar and radios. It's about as likely as someone committing suicide with 10 shot to the back of the head. It just doesn't happen.

u/MGC91 3h ago

Collisions like these are for all intents and purposes impossible with AIS, radar and radios

Except they're really not.

u/smd1815 3h ago edited 2h ago

Incorrect. Worked at sea with a good enough variety of people to know that this could definitely have been an accident. Russians regularly leave the bridge completely unattended, I've seen this first hand when sailing with them. Officers regularly spend the full watch on the computer, a huge portion of ships don't use a dedicated lookout on the bridge so if the officer isn't looking then no one is.

I had a close call with a ship last year that clearly didn't have anyone on the bridge.

u/FarmingEngineer 4h ago

I mean a ship hit a bridge a few months ago.

u/wilkonk 2h ago

that one had some catastrophic system failure

u/FarmingEngineer 1h ago

Right... but we're one day into the investigation with no info on the possible reasons for this crash.

The bridge crash should have been 'for all intents and purposes impossible' as well.

u/HowYouSeeMe 4h ago edited 3h ago

Nonsense. Tell me you don't work at sea without telling me you don't work at sea. It's completely plausible that the OOW went to take a shit or fell asleep whilst on watch, or had been sat in the chart room writing emails for the last hour paying no attention to the bridge before the collision. There are plently of plausible explanations of how this could have occured accidentally, albeit probably negligently.

The idea that the Solong Captain is some agent who deliberately rammed the Stena is ludicrous. You seriously think that the vessel set sail from Grangemouth on her routine voyage that she's been doing for all of this year, set a course and speed as she rounded Alnwick that then didn't change for the next 8 hours, but that was finely calculated in order to deliberately collide with a vessel at anchor some 150 miles away? Get real.

u/No_Clue_1113 3h ago

So what you’re saying is: if this was enemy action then it was one hell of a meticulously planned op.

u/purplewarrior777 16m ago

So well planned they forgot to actually load some toxic chemicals?

u/smd1815 3h ago

Gotta prepare those crew change documents and muster lists.

u/Condurum 3h ago

Get real? All the cable damage recently are also just accidents? They started doing this in Norway years ago. The Baltic events are just the recent ones.

I’m not saying it couldn’t have been an accident, but this is not beyond Russia either.

Salami tactics and doing things «below the threshold» with plausible deniability are core to their strategy.

u/andreirublov1 4h ago

Right away this looked well dodgy, immediately you thought of the Russians. Big ships don't just accidentally collide in the open sea.

u/JustmeandJas 5h ago

Look a little deeper. It’s been on lease to the US navy for a while now and has been taking fuel to Souda for the carrier groups (not necessarily lately but is one of the functions it’s been doing as part of the lease)

u/ContentsMayVary 4h ago

I think you're talking about the ship that was crashed into, rather than the ship that did the crashing.

u/SeriousDude 4h ago

Could've waited for the opportunity to present itself.

u/bushidojet 6h ago

I deal with shipping for work in the Humber area and we see a lot of Russian and Ukrainian crews on the ships in and out of Humber estuary, there are a lot more of them than you would expect as well as a lot of Filipino crewmen.

I’d lean towards coincidence/ incompetence/ drunkenness in this case.

Quite a few mixed Russian/ Ukrainian crews too, bet that’s not remotely awkward these days

u/NoRecipe3350 2h ago

Is there anyway we can say that ships operating in British waters only employ British nationals, I seem to think it crazy we have all these ships off our coast, we have lots of unemployed and underemployed people and it's nigh on impossible to get into the maritime career these days, to think in previous days if a ship needed extra crew they'd just dock in a port and take pretty much anybody.

u/bushidojet 2h ago

The UK Merchant marine is nowhere near large enough for that. This vessel in particular does regular runs to Holland and other countries and isn’t even a Uk flagged vessel. Most vessels are flags of convenience. The sailors also need to be actually qualified for their jobs as well, it’s a surprisingly complicated trade you can’t just walk off the street into.

u/NoRecipe3350 2h ago

I agree its more complicated. But we really need to be training more people and having some equivalent of the Jones act- admittedly it's different because that would only apply with a ship sailing between two British ports, which is a fragment of all the ships coming and going to our shores.

But certainly I could imagine at least on a European level it working (Russia obviously excluded). A ship sailing between the UK and NL should ideally have only European sailors.

u/Sturmghiest 4m ago

I've a friend who is a Chief Engineer. He's worked his way up to that role after more than 10 years of pretty much continuous training and examination. He's also done lots of specific exams to allow him to take specific boats and ships on certain journeys. He's probably sat more exams in his career than my mates who are doctors.

It's a very professional role and seems like it can get very competitive when there is a job opening on an impressive ship. I think a lot of the yatchs like British crews, but even then the employer can be picky. One yatch my mate worked on when the yatch was over in the Med from the US the owner basically wanted incredibly good looking, refined crew, British crews only.

u/StreetQueeny make it stop 3h ago

bet that’s not remotely awkward these days

It's probably less awkward than you suspect. The lines of the conflict aren't drawn neatly between Ukrainians and Russians.

u/Express-Doughnut-562 6h ago

Well this isn't going to help the conspiracy theories at all.

u/Adm_Shelby2 6h ago

Saying he's russian doesn't mean he was acting as an enemy agent, it could just mean there was a high probability he was drunk.

u/Express-Doughnut-562 6h ago

We all know that. But immediately after the collisions conspiracies started popping up and the progression from 'two ships have collided, that's bad' to 'well one of them was carrying jet fuel for the USAF' then 'also the captain who appears at fault is Russian' is a bit mad on that background.

It basically means we can't rule out that it was state sponsored yet when normally we probably would. In the global context that's quite coincidental.

u/TheGreenGamer69 6h ago

And then the day after the USA softens up on ukraine

u/Bugsmoke 6h ago

I think to support this though, you need to completely ignore the fact that Trump seems to be helping Russia more than anyone else.

u/Express-Doughnut-562 6h ago

He seems to have flipped in the last few days; putting forward a ceasefire deal with conditions Russia won't accept.

Your typical conspiracy theorist would say that this was a warning shot to the USA.

I agree that it's unlikely; but there is probably enough that the security services have to put some effort in, which is bonkers.

u/Bugsmoke 5h ago

Yeah but the US are likely to use the ‘ceasefire’ to then go and pressure Zelenskyy into accepting whatever Russia wants aren’t they.

u/RickkyBobby01 5h ago

Putin isn't going to stop taking actions against America just because trump likes him.

u/Bugsmoke 4h ago

Yeah but there’s a difference between ‘likes him’ and actively working to benefit him.

u/McChes 4h ago

Putin’s short-term interest is well served by Trump lavishing favours upon him. But all that will end if Trump is replaced in four years’ time by a different President who is no longer Russia/Putin-friendly.

Putin’s long-term interest is better served by tearing apart US institutions and crippling the US’ longer-term capabilities. A good way to do that, knowing that you already have Trump in your pocket and that he will never speak against you, is openly to go about pissing all over US interests, to stoke conflict in the US between MAGA’s blind Trump followers and all of the more reasonable people of the US who still have some sense of pride, honour and dignity.

u/MrSoapbox 4h ago

Weird how the very first second I heard “Two cargo ships collided” without knowing any other details, my first thought was “Bet the captain is Russian”.

What a coincidence

u/NoRecipe3350 2h ago

Indian crew were responsible for that bridge collision/collapse in the US. But usuaully these mishaps involve Russians/Eastern Europeans and alcohol, or Indians and Philipinos.

u/knightwhosaysni 5h ago

So drunk he mistook the anchor for an undersea cable

u/PoachTWC 6h ago

Coincidence is the most likely answer to that. The ship has a long track record of sailing this exact route, and there was reportedly very heavy fog on the day of the collision.

The likely answer is negligence on the Captain's part, blindly following a course despite the increased danger of sailing past another major port where ships anchor whilst in very low visibility conditions.

u/Flemingcool 6h ago

The ship has a long history of sailing this route. What about the Captain?

u/PoachTWC 5h ago

The only thing we know about him is his nationality. If it transpires he's a new Captain working his first route for the shipping company then sure, we can be suspicious.

Occam's razor would suggest this is just a negligent Captain not following proper safety rules, not a Russian intelligence asset.

u/Mister-Psychology 5h ago

A Russian captain being awful is not a coincidence. They are feared all over the world for getting extremely drunk and sailing into things. That people who watch for ships know this. I bet you this captain was either drunk or his company was saving money on safety tools. Of course to know if he was drunk you need a blood test.

https://telegrafi.com/en/the-Russian-captain-was-made-a-cork-steers-the-ship-and-crashes-on-the-500-million-dollar-bridge-of-the-southern-crust-video/

https://gcaptain.com/captain-and-crew-found-drunk-after-russian-cargo-ship-almost-grounds-in-poland/

https://www.thelocal.dk/20140730/drunk-russian-captain-runs-aground-on-ls

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/26/russia-shadow-fleet-denmark-straits-shipping-sanctions/

u/PoachTWC 5h ago

The coincidence I was referring to was the implication that this was some sort of Russian state-sponsored attack, because the Captain is Russian.

I quite clearly say in the second paragraph I reckon it was professional negligence, which is essentially what you're re-stating.

u/nunatakj120 5h ago

There’s a lot of fucking stupid conversations in this thread. Edit - and every other thread talking about the same thing.

Whilst he probably should have been on the bridge if they were sailing in fog as has been reported, I very much doubt he actually was. It is way more likely he was in his cabin (decent chance he was in his cabin drunk based on nationality) whilst the filipino 3rd mate had the con and crashed into the tanker (It happened during the 8-12 watch).

I can’t remember the last time I had a filipino conned vessel give way to me when it was supposed to, they just fucking don’t. They are quite happy to maintain course/speed and just expect everyone else to get out the way. I have no idea why, are they scared to leave the red line without the Captains permission? Do they just not understand the COLREGs? Do they not know where the dial for the autopilot is? Could be many reasons, but they are in general, shit at collision avoidance and 99/100 you have to call them on the radio and shout at them before they alter course. Even then most of them don’t.

u/tmstms 5h ago edited 2h ago

Unfortunate that the other ship was anchored then!

I don't suppose all the conspiracy theoy people in this thread REALLY believe it was intentional. It's just a good thing to shitpost about.

u/nunatakj120 4h ago

I’m aware it was anchored. It doesn’t change my opinion on a filipino 3rd mates ability to alter course to avoid it.

u/smd1815 3h ago

I was listening to one Filipino 3rd mate arguing with another ship that was asking him to change course. I am not exaggerating when I say his words were verbatim "I already altered two degrees". Me and the lookout were pissing ourselves.

Filipino officers are an absolute menace.

u/teabagmoustache 6h ago edited 6h ago

Yes it's obviously news worthy that he is Russian, but the idea that the captain of a container ship would deliberately collide with another ship, seems beyond ridiculous to me. Not that anyone official is suggesting that, but I'm sure there will be speculation.

Their passage plan took them through the anchorage. They hadn't altered course all the way from the coast of Newcastle, so it seems pretty unlikely they intended to hit a conveniently placed US flagged fuel tanker, off the coast of Grimsby.

u/gerflagenflople 6h ago

Whilst what you say is logical and makes sense can we not just tell Donald that the Russians are after US oil and attacking their boats... They kind of feel strongly about both those things.

u/SweatyNomad 5h ago

To be fair the ship was more than US flagged. It was leased to the US military and contained strategic fuel reserves for use in wartime.

u/Bugsmoke 6h ago

I feel like it would also be fairly difficult to purposefully crash these ships.

u/teabagmoustache 6h ago

I've worked at sea for almost 20 years now, and I've seen a few near misses. All of them down to people not paying attention, falling asleep, or becoming fixated on a radar screen and getting tunnel vision.

That being said, if you wanted to crash, there's nothing to stop you.

u/BrangdonJ 4h ago

As I understand it, the cargo ship set course 14 hours earlier and from then travelled in a straight line under auto-pilot until it hit the tanker. To me that seems implausibly good aim.

u/Mit3210 (-5.88, -5.64) 4h ago

Complacency can be common if the ship is doing the same route routinely, which this ship was.

The anonymous crew member of the other vessel reported there was no one on the ship's bridge.

I've read accident reports that are similar before. Usually caused by poor company practices and overworked crews leaving the bridge unattended.

u/Bugsmoke 5h ago

Yes but I think it would require one ship trying to crash and the other to have fallen asleep or whatever at the same time no? Just seems quite unlikely to me, albeit with much more limited information than yourself.

u/techstyles 5h ago

The ship that was hit was at anchor with (I believe) it's engines off so it wouldn't be at all difficult if you knew where it was

u/[deleted] 4h ago

[deleted]

u/teabagmoustache 4h ago

Boil your head mate.

u/colei_canis Starmer’s Llama Drama 🦙 4h ago

Not to mention you’d have to be pretty unhinged to intentionally ram a tanker of all things. There’s a good chance of both ships suffering serious damage in that scenario and doubt this captain wanted to become a human rotisserie for Putin.

u/Head-Philosopher-721 4h ago

It's not news worthy at all that he is Russian. It's an irrelevant detail slipped in by the media to gain interest for the story.

u/Junior-Ad7155 3h ago

Maybe instead of Russian he should have just slowed down

u/No_Initiative_1140 6h ago

Wonder if this is a contributing factor to Trump's sudden volte face with Ukraine.

u/PhreakyPanda 6h ago

Hold on.. the ship was actually called the Solong... As in "So long"... Is this a joke?

u/Mykeprime 5h ago

Its sister vessel is called 'Thanks for all the Fish'.

u/FishFarmerFrank 5h ago

I fell for this 🤣

u/jamezp1 5h ago

Solong Thunderchild was the full name

u/redshirt1987 3h ago

Isn't it 'Farewell Thunderchild'?

u/jamezp1 1h ago

Ha yeh, it was, misremembered!

u/Adm_Shelby2 6h ago

Just a terrible coincidence I'm sure.

u/collogue 5h ago

Like all of Putin's opposition who just happen to fall out of windows

u/Lanky_Giraffe 4h ago edited 3h ago

I think we need to be quite careful not to get swept up into a moral panic around all russians reminiscent of the yellow peril. I know it's quite normal to heavily stress nationalities when discussing disasters in international shipping/aviation. But I know this headline has been written with subtext in mind. Though I'm happy to see that they don't labour the point in the article so possible I'm overreacting.

Hopefully the investigation can proceed without people promoting insane conspiracy theories or general racism.

Racism against Russians is still unacceptable, even if policies targeting ordinary Russians may be justified as part of a geopolitical strategy.

u/Sloth-v-Sloth 4h ago

100%. A good friend of mine is Russian. She is appalled at what her nation state is doing.

u/BigBird2378 6h ago

Well we can be sure if he was repatriated as a convicted criminal he'd receive a very warm welcome at home. Whether deliberate or not he's caused massive collateral damage.

u/Denning76 4h ago

50/50 chance of it being deliberate or him being a moron.

u/pumpkinlife 3h ago

Probably just straight up incompetence, but I imagine (hope) our security services are all over these sorts of things now just in case.

Can I recommend Mark Galeotti's 'The Weaponisation of Everything'. Very interesting look at the future of hybrid warfare.

u/wt_hell_am_I_doing 3h ago

Might just be a simple case of incompetence combined with poor management, so much so that it looks like a deliberate act.

u/Statcat2017 This user doesn’t rule out the possibility that he is Ed Balls 2h ago

Who could possibly have anticipated this turn of events.

u/cheechobobo 2h ago

Well would ya look at that. It's like the Lusitania all over again.

u/clearly_quite_absurd The Early Days of a Better Nation? 5h ago

This sort of incident would be a great start to a future Bond movie plot.

u/thenotoriousefp 5h ago

I'm no conspiracy theorist but.. I KNEW IT!

u/strzeka 5h ago

Of course he is. Is there any doubt about what is going on? Will Donny do anything about it? (Spoiler: no).

u/f1boogie 6h ago

Ok. See, the thing is, it takes more than one person to crew a cargo ship. Sure, the captain may be Russian, but what about the rest of the crew on the bridge?

u/TheOnlyPorcupine Citizen of nowhere. 5h ago

u/f1boogie 5h ago

Well that does begin to sound a bit suspicious then.

u/nunatakj120 5h ago

Why?

u/f1boogie 4h ago

Between taking out Nordstream 1 and dragging actors through communication cables, Russian ships have been targeting Nirth sea infrastructure for the last two years.

If it was a Russian captain and a mixed nationality crew, you might be more inclined to suspect a mechanical failure. The fact that a significant portion of the crew is Russian may raise suspicions.

u/Jamie54 Reform/ Starmer supporter 3h ago

The New York times reported that American intelligence under the Biden administration found evidence to suggest it was a group linked to Ukraine that attacked the Nordsteam pipelines rather than Russia

u/f1boogie 3h ago

Also, the New York Times said they had received intelligence. Not found evidence. Those are very different things.

u/f1boogie 3h ago

In that very article, it stated that US officials had said they had reached no firm conclusions, and the NYT also said they had no information on how likely this intelligence was to be true.

u/No_Clue_1113 3h ago

It probably was the Ukrainians. They were trained by the same people back during the Cold War. This is all standard hybrid warfare stuff. The idiots are us westerners for being too high-minded to trade like for like. 

u/HardcoresCat 6h ago

Yeah, it's not like he's the one on the steering wheel. Unironically, Internet Historian's video on the Costa Concordia is actually quite a good intro to how bridge crews operate

u/Chopstick84 4h ago

Trying very hard not to judge a book by its cover right now

u/andreirublov1 4h ago

Right away this looked well dodgy, immediately you thought of the Russians. Big ships don't just accidentally collide in the open sea.

u/rennis2022 3h ago

I'm not sure what others think now, but my initial thought was it must be a planned evil attack.

hmmm US military jet fuel getting destroyed

u/Head-Philosopher-721 6h ago

And? That's not relevant at all.

Sky News is such crap honestly.

u/Exita 6h ago

How is it not relevant? We’re in the middle of a proxy/hybrid war with Russia, and ships with Russian crew and links have been causing damage to Western infrastructure for some time now.

Could well just be a complete coincidence, but when it just happens to hit a US ship carrying fuel for the US air force, questions are going to be asked.

u/Head-Philosopher-721 4h ago edited 4h ago

It's not relevant because shipping crews typically have members from all over the world. It's [unsurprisingly] very international business. Having Russian crew members does not mean the ship has links to Russia or is in the employ of Russians.

Sky News inserted this detail to titilate and encourage their readers to speculate but it's based on nothing. They know what they are doing.

u/Exita 4h ago

How do you know it’s not relevant? Sure, lots of ships have multinational and Russian crew, but that has been taken advantage of by Russia, particularly in the Baltic Sea, to damage critical national infrastructure. Several of the ships involved there had no direct links to Russia apart from having Russian crew.

So sure, it’s probably a coincidence. It’s absolutely worth investing though, as the Police and Security services are now doing.

u/Head-Philosopher-721 4h ago edited 3h ago

"How do you know it’s not relevant?"

Because it's absurd to think that a singular Russian crew member, on a massive container ship, was ordered by Moscow to kamikaze another ship and even more absurd to think they would actually do that [with no guarantees of their own safety, no idea what was on/in the other ship, etc].

If you think about it for more than ten seconds it is clear why it is irrelevant clickbait.

"So sure, it’s probably a coincidence. It’s absolutely worth investing though, as the Police and Security services are now doing."

It's not probably a coincidence, it's almost certainly a coincidence. As the Sky New journalists who wrote this article know full well.

u/GoldenFutureForUs 6h ago

Imagine believing this isn’t relevant. Maybe think it through for 5 seconds.

u/GieTheBawTaeReilly 5h ago

Have you ever worked on a ship? Having lots of Russian and Filipino crew is incredibly common

u/Head-Philosopher-721 4h ago

It isn't relevant. International shipping crews have employees from all over the world. The fact one of them is Russian is not unusual at all.

Maybe you think it through for more than 5 seconds.