Was the chief mate asleep when the ship ran aground?
It may have been a sleeping chief mate who caused a container ship to run aground on Thursday, right next to a private home by the Trondheimsfjord in Norway.
That’s what police attorney Kjetil Bruland Sørensen told the Norwegian news agency NTB on Friday.
- I can confirm that the police have initially received information from others who were on board that he was asleep, said Bruland Sørensen.
The suspect is not the captain but was responsible for the ship’s navigation when it headed toward land.
Images of the 135-meter-long ship, which ended up just a few meters from a house, circulated widely on Thursday. There were no injuries or oil spills in connection with the incident.
The company that owns the ship, North Sea Container Line, commented on the police’s Friday statement, according to NTB:
- We acknowledge that the police say they suspect a person in connection with yesterday’s incident, and we continue to assist the police in their work.
- We are also conducting internal investigations but do not wish to speculate about the cause until the authorities have reached their conclusions.
The individual is suspected of violating paragraph 14 of Norway’s Ship Safety Act, which states that ships must be navigated in a way that does not pose “a danger to life and health, the environment, or material assets, NTB reports.
The ship, NCL Salten, was en route from Norway’s northwest coast to Orkanger, located within the fjord system.
It struck land while Johan Helberg was sleeping in his house in Byneset, west of Trondheim.
He only woke up when a neighbor “rang the doorbell frantically.”
- If it had hit five meters to the left, it would have slid up the rocks, and then my house would probably look very different, Johan Helberg told the Norwegian outlet NRK.
The ship sails under the Cypriot flag.
