A prosecutor has ruled out mechanical failure in a fatal collision in the North Sea, telling jurors in the trial of a ship captain: “The only thing not working was the man in the dock.”

Russian national Vladimir Motin had been on sole watch duty when the container ship Solong crashed into the Stena Immaculate tanker anchored near the Humber Estuary, killing crew member Mark Angelo Pernia, 38, who was on the bow.

In his defence, Motin, 59, said he made a “mistake” and pressed the wrong button when he tried to take the Solong out of autopilot and steer away from the Stena Immaculate from one nautical mile away.

Not realising the error, he told jurors that he proceeded to stop and restart the steering gear to no effect, thinking the Solong could have developed a rudder fault experienced by sister ship, Sanskip Express.

In a closing speech on Thursday, prosecutor Julia Faure Walker rejected his claims and suggested Motin had lied about what happened to “get back to his wife” in Russia.

She cast doubt that the experienced mariner was “unable to press a button” to switch from autopilot to manual steering.

She told jurors it was “a button that had he pressed, Mark Pernia would still be alive, a simple task it is inconceivable, using your clear logic and common sense, he would have been unable to do”.

She said: “It would have been blindingly obvious to him that he had pressed the wrong button, and how to rectify it if that is what happened.

“The reality is that he did nothing to avoid collision. Instead he launched into a problem that had never occurred on the Solong.

The stricken container ship, the Solong, which was involved in a collision with a tanker in the North Sea, is towed in to the port of Aberdeen | Michal Wachucik/PA Wire

placeholder image — The stricken container ship, the Solong, which was involved in a collision with a tanker in the North Sea, is towed in to the port of Aberdeen | Michal Wachucik/PA Wire

“There were no mechanical or electronic difficulties on the Solong. The rudder was working. The only thing that was not working on the 10th March 2025 was the man in the dock.”

The prosecutor suggested jurors may conclude that Motin had a “lax attitude” and “thought he knew better than anyone else”.

She pointed to the fact that he had switched off the Solong’s bridge navigation watch alert system (BNWAS), which was designed to ensure there is someone physically on the bridge and awake.

She told jurors: “He kept the door shut, kept the bridge door shut and kept you from being able to see what really happened.

“He does not want you to look inside and see the reality of his failure to keep a proper lookout.”

Ms Faure Walker said the collision posed a “serious and obvious risk to the crew”, she said.

And it was “foreseeable” that Mr Pernia would be on the bow greasing as part of his job when the Solong smashed into the side of Stena Immaculate, causing a massive explosion.

Ms Faure-Walker said Motin was responsible for “multiple failures” that caused Mr Pernia’s death.

He allegedly failed to sound the alarm, summon help or initiate a crash stop and should have acted sooner to steer the Solong away from its collision course, jurors have heard.

Whether in isolation or combination, the defendant’s failures were so “exceptionally bad they amount to gross negligence”, Ms Faure Walker said.

Motin, from Primorsky, St Petersburg, has denied gross negligence manslaughter and the Old Bailey trial continues.