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Bit of an update on here for anybody following the collision (technically an allision) between the cargo ship Solong and tanker Stena Immaculate earlier today in the approaches to the Humber.
So this here was the position this morning. The blue vessels are tugs, red are generally rescue or pilot vessels, the greens are mostly high speed windfarm vessels. There's also some trawlers bimbling around. Solong is the yellow dot stuck in the side of the orange tanker, with an ocean going tug providing firefighting.
This was the situation for most of the morning, with an increasing number of tugs coming to assist, and smaller vessels searching for a crew member who was rumoured to be unaccounted for.
It was then reported, by by a local MP, that everybody had been accounted for, and the search efforts knocked off.
Then in mid-afternoon everything changed. The tugs withdrew at least a couple of miles. This might be related to the announcement that fifteen containers of sodium cyanide were loaded on Solong, or perhaps an explosion risk.
Half an hour later an obvious and ominous searchline formed of smaller vessels.
Those vessels searched until around seven pm, stopping with darkness. It's still not clear what prompted it, but an obvious concern is that they're no longer convinced the whole crew is indeed ashore.
That's more or less where we are now. A number of tugs have been released and are mooching back to Grimsby, most of the smaller vessels have also left - many of them were diverted from work duties and have been out since early morning. The RNLI and some major tugs remain nearby.
The Humber is currently closed to commercial shipping and vessels are either diverting or anchoring to wait.
As for other news you might not have caught, the vessels involved were evacuated almost immediately by a mixture of pilot vessels and windfarm support vessels - essentially the first things that could get on scene. The RNLI rightly get a lot of kudos, but seafarers of all backgrounds will kick into action to save lives where they can.
Given the situation they faced - a tanker full of jet fuel and a boxship of unknown cargo - I hope they are given the respect they deserve for this.
The tugs having to stand off isn't a problem either. The impact dragged Stena Immaculate nearly half a mile but its anchor has successfully held both vessels. By all accounts Solong is embedded firmly in its side - unsurprising as it hit square on at 16 knots with no attempt to either slow or change course.
Solong went dark on AIS a long time ago. It's been absolutely ravaged by the fire. Stena Immaculate incredibly continues to advertise its position.
Given the nature of the tanker's cargo and employment - it's shifting jet fuel for the US government - there's been a fair bit of speculation that something untoward happened here.
It's unlikely - Solong was passing exactly along its previous track through the area and was likely on autopilot to a regular waypoint. If it wanted to ensure a collision it wouldn't necessarily line it up nine hours in advance either. There's nothing suspicious in this - just incredibly stupid.
Breaking - it looks like the search wasn't a false alarm at all. This is incredibly sad news given the reports earlier that everybody was safe.
And given the shitshow of alleged seamanship from Solong's bridge team today, it sticks the absolute tin lid on things that they couldn't apparently confirm how many crew should have got off the vessel until this afternoon (search efforts were definitely wound down for a while).
I hope they have the book thrown at them.
Further update - looks like the Humber is open for business again. A lot of this is tugs etc returning, but there's ro-ro vessels and bulkers in here too.
Update late this evening - the ships are still burning, according to the coastguard agency. Pretty much everything else has left the scene although Trinity House's Alert is now on station and I'm watching a couple of tugs that are possibly going back.
The tanker is likely still anchored securely but it's been windier here in York this evening and I guess at some point Solong might detach itself.
Ok, so the news from today. Firstly, and unsurprisingly, the plod have declared their suspicion that somebody might have been a dickhead...
Solong remains on fire, and there are reports it might sink at some point.
I'm not sure what has sparked those reports, but I will note ALL ships leak, there's not going to be any working pumps in this mess, and they might occasionally be damping down with more water.
At least they can try to get it to sink somewhere that's not too inconvenient.
On which note I'm pretty sure they've moved it south of the accident site to [checks notes] the point the entrance channels converge.
Er, maybe not letting it sink right there, lads?
Stena Immaculate meanwhile looks surprisingly healthy, considering its imminent reduction to razor blades. You can see how deeply Solong cut into it - double hulls are great and all, but they're never going to withstand this.
It remains at anchor, at a location that had probably been briefed on every passage plan going right now, with heavy amounts of underlining saying "do not hit"
It's accompanied by a tug, presumably as insurance, and also the pollution control vessel Mellum, which has come over from Germany.
I've not heard much about pollution so far - it's going to depend on what has burnt off, what has already spilled, and what remains in breached tanks.
Finally for now the concern about sodium cyanide has abated.
I'm not entirely sure what's going on there, but it's possible it took some time to confirm which containers had been loaded and what they contained. There's a long history of contents and weights being utterly different to the manifest too - potentially dangerous for both stability and not going spontaneously on fire.
And even without the sodium cyanide there'll be plenty of other things in there that you don't want in your sushi.
Further update for anybody who cares...
Solong continues to drift generally southwards, attended by various tugs. Given the AIS tracks I suspect they've not got a brilliant tow on it and don't want to shove it around too much. It's now well clear of both the approaches and the Lincolnshire coast though.
Stena Immaculate remains at anchor - you can see how far Solong has now drifted.
sketched thanks
@DreadShips now we just need one of them to be in a bit of a hurry while racing for limited dock space and run into H&S Wisdom
@DreadShips it would be a real shame if someone else hit it too
@DreadShips thanks for the updates btw
@blueorangeblue @DreadShips The Tricolor in 2002 was hit after the collision several times and about 57 times a near- collision took place. So don’t be too optimistic. There are a lot of ass holes on bridges!!
https://www.hbvl.be/nieuws/berging-tricolor-opnieuw-aanvaring-vermeden-al-de-57e-keer/33799598.html
@DreadShips was it converted or still running on HFO?
@DreadShips I'd like at this moment to make a shout out to the people who designed the tanker such that it was able to survive a broadside ram from a container ship, this could easily have been so much worse.
@DreadShips Weights not matching the manifest because of a logistics cockup, fine. Contents, not so fine, for these exact reasons, not to mention the problems that creates for salvage & environmental safety.
I doubt this one idiot skipper was the only one breaking the rules.
@DreadShips Inside (and outside) opinion from a certain conservation charity bod is that although the spillage is obviously *bad*, it's happened outside migration and breeding season so has happened at the "best" time. Quotation marks doing some hard work there, I appreciate.
@DreadShips I think Mellum has pretty good firefighting capabilities next to all her other tricks.
@hmwilker @DreadShips Yes, Mellum has 5 remote controlled fire monitors. Her main job is buoy tender, but she has capabilities for pollution control (incl. a ground station to coordinate with specialized planes), firefighting, and can work as emergency tug or as icebreaker, if necessary.
So, in my opinion, better to have these capabilities on site without needing them than the other way around. :-)
@DreadShips Hull integrity of the tanker is compromised, so getting spill control vessels on site is just basic sound risk management.
As for the damage: that'll buff out. Launched 2017, still got about 18 years of lifecycle in it. Wouldn't surprise me if she gets repaired.
@PalmAndNeedle yeah, I don't think there's anything automatically sinister about it being there. Nor do I think it's unlikely to be useful.
@PalmAndNeedle @DreadShips I came here to make the "that'll buff right out" comment, but you beat me to it.
If they can stop it sinking, breaking in half or bursting into flames again before they can get it unloaded and alongside a jetty, I reckon it'll go back into service.
From the photos it looks like there's machinery running? Salvage crew on board?
@DreadShips
That's going to take a fair bit of buffing out. but given the state that WW2 navel types used to bring their ships back in for repairs, Not impossible.
@DreadShips The BBC keeps going on about how the double hull should have survived this, while carrying an eyewitness report that they were being actively rammed for several minutes.
@Keab42 @DreadShips journalists often sound plausible until they touch on your area of expertise, then you realise they usually did not do well in science or engineering at school 
.
@DreadShips @Keab42 Indded, but daft to anyone with a passing interest in ships / marine engineering. As a diver with an interest in Shipwrecks I am trying to think of the last big wreck off the Yorkshire Coast, possily the SK Link in 1991? http://www.eskside.co.uk/dive_whitby/sk_link.htm
Just visited the little museum in Moneygal (https://www.moneygall.ie/obamas-ancestral-home) - Feels like a monument to a different USA.
@DreadShips
I’ve been out all day, just catching up, good to read your summary of events.
That looks like someone was keeping proper watch!
@DreadShips
Looks like they are trying to get it into the Humber, hopefully somewhere shallow where shore based fire fighting can also get to it.
or
Maybe, Park it next to that other one, stuck in the mud for a month.
@BrianSmith950 taking that thought seriously, if there's any danger of it going down they're not going to let it be anywhere near the dredged channel inside the Humber.
@DreadShips
I'm guessing they still need to search it for the remains of the crew member who has not been accounted for 
@DreadShips @BrianSmith950 on the other hand, most of the rest of the Humber counts as "shallow", so if they could take it in at high water...
(then again, most of the rest of the humber is also environmentally protected...)
@DreadShips is there room on H&S Wisdom's mudbank for another one? Would stop it sinking permanently!
@DreadShips steel hulls don't leak. Intact ones that is, but as the aggressor hull damage is probably limited, and unlikely to have gone past the collision bulkhead. They do, however, run full if you happen to pump in lot of water. As you do while fighting a fire. That's the risk.
@PalmAndNeedle I used "leak" rather loosely for the ways water gets places.
@DreadShips Any word if his last name is Farragut?
@DreadShips I really appreciate the thread—Thank you!
@DreadShips Quite. The master should be in court.
@DreadShips so long those conspiracies, sometimes it's just incompetence and stupidity
@DreadShips hmm, I welcome back all conspiracy theories, I'm so sorry for doubting you .. a Russian captain slams into a US military ship in the North Sea, coincidence/gross negligence ?? Or part of Russia's ongoing "hybrid war" with the West - I'm siding with the "Russians are genocidal terrorists' theory any day of the week
@bonno it founders on the fact that Solong had passed exactly along that track before though. He'd have to know - days in advance - that the tanker was going to anchor exactly there and would be beam on at exactly the time he arrived, after setting the course several hours and over a hundred miles away.
If he's capable of calculating all that in advance he should be playing the lottery, not bobbing around the north sea
@bonno also it's not really Russia's MO - they like to openly do the supervillain thing and then deny it with a smirk despite everybody knowing they did it. It's too clandestine for Russia, I'm afraid.
If there were a billion bots blaming the US for spoiling British beaches and Russia banning US tankers as dangerous...
@DreadShips yep you're probably right, still again, a Russian national doing a very serious harm to Western interests in European area, it's probably just a coincidence ... or - is it ?? - I think Russian sabotage is often underestimated, and that is their MO, but you're probably right this time, probably ...
@DreadShips it was misty/foggy at the time of the allision, too. Donna Nook station had visibility at <1 nm.
Still, you'd think whoever was on watch would notice on the radar, AIS, or out the window, wouldn't you?
@greem yes, important detail - although if anything it makes tooling through the Humber approaches at more or less top speed seem even dafter.
@DreadShips And I hope the Captain of the cargo ship is in custody