(Stockholm) Sweden on Monday opened a preliminary investigation for “negligence” and “drunkenness” aggravated after a British freighter collided overnight with a small Danish freighter whose crew member was found dead and the another is missing.
Two crew members of the British freighter Scot carrier, a 56-year-old Croatian and a 30-year-old Briton, were taken into custody for “aggravated negligence at sea”, “aggravated drunkenness” and “aggravated manslaughter”, announced the Swedish justice.
The accident occurred around 3.30am local time in the Baltic Sea off the Swedish port of Ystad and the Danish island of Bornholm. Apparently struck by the much larger British ship, the Danish ship, the Karin Høj, capsized.
The causes of the accident, which occurred in the middle of the night but under normal navigation conditions for the season, are not yet known.
The British ship “put a rowboat into the sea to find survivors and they heard screams in the water but they couldn’t find anyone,” said Jonas Franzén, a spokesperson for the Traffic Authority maritime.
Significant research assets, with a total of nine ships and a helicopter, were deployed around the Danish freighter, which was floating with the hull completely turned over.
But after several hours of fruitless search for the two sailors of the crew of the Karin Høj, the emergency services put an end to the operation at the scene of the accident.
Using winches, the Danish ship was brought closer to the coast to allow divers to try to find the two missing inside.
A lifeless body was found on board in the afternoon, a police spokesperson said.
Without any sign of life and with water at four degrees, the chances of finding them alive were low and the situation was “critical from the start”, agree the rescuers.
“We will dive as if it were a rescue operation,” however told AFP Angelica Anbring, Swedish rescue services who hope to find an air pocket where a survivor could have taken refuge. .
The Danish owner of this 55-meter-long vessel confirmed to AFP that the crew was limited to two people.
The British ship, a cargo ship of around 90 meters, is operational.
The Danish freighter was en route to Denmark, while the British sailed to Scotland, the maritime authority said.
No polluting leaks were found, but the emergency services took measures to avoid any pollution.
The sector is an important maritime traffic route, to access the Öresund Strait which connects the North Sea and the Baltic via the seas of Kattegat and Skagerrak. But collisions are rare.
The Swedish coastguard had just completed a major rescue operation this weekend to extinguish a major fire on a cargo ship, the Almirante Storni, off Gothenburg, the country’s largest port.