Gavin Grey: UK Correspondent on the arrest made in the case of the North Sea collision

An arrest has been made in the case of the fiery North Sea collision, which saw two large ships —one at anchor— erupt in balls of flame. 

English Police have announced the arrest of a 59-year-old man, understood to be the captain of the cargo ship, and charged him with suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter. 

UK Correspondent Gavin Grey told Andrew Dickens the charge is due to the fact that one man is still missing, presumed dead. 

He says it’s also due to the fact that conditions were good at the time of the collision, so people can’t understand how the crash could’ve occurred. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To the UK we go and get a greg. Good
money to you either, Andrew. So we've got the collision
between the oil tanker and the cargo vessel and they're
still on fire.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yes, I'm afraid. So one of the vessels still on fire.
The other has now been put out. But the latest
is a fifty nine year old man has now been
arrested and that is in connection on suspicion of gross
negligence manslaughter. And that is because one person is missing,
presumed dead, and also of course because one of the
ships was actually stationary, was moored up at the time

(00:33):
and appears to have been just struck by another one.
And this happened in daylight hours. The conditions had were
really pretty good. It was daylight, as I said, the
fog that was overnight and early morning had predominantly cleared,
and people just can't understand how this accident could have happened.
Both ships absolutely massive. On a more positive note, there
was talk about a cyanide compound on board one of

(00:56):
the ships. The owner of that ship has in the
last few hours said no, no, no, the containers had stored that,
but at the time of this accident and fire, there
was none of that compound on board.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Okay, now we've got the President of America refusing to
rule out the fact that there may be a recession
for the US this year. We've had the US stocks
go down overnight, and we've had turmoil in Europe so
far this week.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, we have. And that looked to have been halted
earlier our time this morning, a few hours ago when
I logged on, actually the CAC that's the French indussy
had climb point two of a percent, Germany's dacks had
risen point four percent, and the foot seat was by
and large pretty flat. Here in the UK. I've just
looked again and the last couple of hours have been

(01:41):
pretty rough. The foot see now down one point two percent,
the CACK down almost one and a half, and the
dacks down one and a third percent. So significant disruption,
Still significant uncertainty in the markets as Donald Trump's very
very flip flop on ideas and tariffs and embargoes all

(02:01):
the time seems to cause a great deal of uncertainty.
And that is one thing, Andrew, as you know that
the markets absolutely can't stand.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yes and they can't predict what's going to happen. Nixon
they like to do that, and I thank you so much.
Gavin Gray from the UK. For more from Early Edition
with Ryan Bridge, listen live to News Talks it Be
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