Oil tanker was likely carrying aviation fuel for the US military (as per the BBC).
Let the conspiracy theories begin! (Does jet fuel melt ships!?!)
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
75 points (100.0% liked)
World News
43243 readers
3478 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
If they just made these ships bigger so you could spot them more easily on a plane void of other vertical structures, then they couldn’t just sneak up on you out of nowhere.
Now, I'm no expert but as I understand it, the North Sea is a pretty big place.
How is this even possible with modern navigation and communication systems? Even archaic, navigation and communication systems would be able to prevent this from happening. A crows nest would probably be able to avoid this from happening.
Am I crazy?
This happened not far off the coast. Looks like the oil tanker was at anchor waiting, while the cargo ship ploughed into it.
Oil tankers are not exactly the most nimble of ships, even if it tried to get out of the way.
I completely understand that neither would be very nimble but I'd expect with how large I'm sure both ships are (an assumption, I know) they shouldn't need to be nimble to be able to avoid a collision if they're so visible
Their size makes them very hard to turn too, so you can see them a while off, but that doesn't help if it takes Kms to stop.
It also only helps if there is someone actually looking out of the window....
I don't think ships have any collision avoidance systems, like aircrafts do.
And I don't think ships are actively monitored and instructed, like aircrafts are.
Seems hard to believe that a ship travelling at 16 knots was unable to avoid a stationary ship.
However, further down the BBC post, there is an image of all the ships in the area at the time of the collision.
If it's busy, I'd imagine the crew were alert. Equally, they might have been concentrating on something else.
They had also just left port, so perhaps there was a change of shift/watch.
There are a lot of laws regarding maritime navigation to avoid collision.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_Preventing_Collisions_at_Sea
Perhaps the cargo ship did not realise the tanker was anchored, and assumed they would move out of the way.
Ultimately, everything is too recent to be able to understand what happened.
Edit:
Link to the post with the image of traffic at the time:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cgq1pwjlqq2t?post=asset%3A6555b096-7f65-4270-9768-53eaae9531b4#post
You are not. I would not be surprised if investigations will conclude that this happened as a result of negligence.
I'm glad it's not just me
Most ships operate on autopilot. I'm guessing the one at anchor didn't have its transponder running, and there was no one really paying attention on the bridge of the other, since 99.9% of the time the ship runs itself, and the ocean is a very big and empty space.
But that's mostly speculation.
Marine radar tends to have a collision alert. Even on autopilot, someone on the bridge should hear alarm bells. Assuming their equipment works. So gross negligence most likely.
Well, unless you're talking about a different transponder, the Marine Traffic sites all show that the oil tanker that was hit was at anchor and her location is still being reported live by the transponder onboard.
I also am fairly sure that there are heavy fines for turning it off, but I'm not a mariner and don't pretend to be one on the internet.
I know nothing about it. Was it Russia?