Navy Officer Proved Guilty In Yacht-Tanker Collision

In the Solent a navy officer belonging to the royal class was proved guilty who failed to keep a proper lookout and impeded the path of a yacht leading to a collision of his yacht with an oil tanker. The officer named Lt. Roly Wilson who was 32 years old, was skippering a yacht measuring 32 feet smashed his yacht with a 120000 tn oil tanker called Hanne Knutsen when the 2011 Cowes week was going on. He was on trial at the Southampton Magistrate court.

As the tanker navigated the Solent, the officer also flouted the laws that are made by maritime authority and made a cut at his Corby sloop called Atlanta of Chester. He denied the three charges that was stated against him at an earlier hearing. Adrian Wheal was one of the crew members who jumped to the water from the vessel just a moment before the accident took place and the boat being completely devastated, one the crewman was seriously injured. The guilty was captured on camera from the accident footage during the final stage of the Cowes Week event. The footage also was the hit in the internet that year.

Wilson & his crew were all included as the members of the Royal Naval Sailing Association. Mike Shrives, the former RN commander who is was yacht master, examiner and instructor gave an interview to the Yachting Monthly where he said that they all thought that they are taking their last breathe just when the collision was about to take place. One charge was put forward against Wilson of not keeping a proper eye & 2 charges were brought for impeding the path of the 830 feet tanker. But all three charges were denied by the guilty. The prosecutor of the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, Mr. Peter Handley explained the magistrates that the exact place where the accident occurred is the halfway of the channel.

Mr. Handley also added saying that as because there were contacts between the yacht and the tanker, the yacht went and scraped the port side of the tanker.