One dead, 11 injured after fishing boat, cargo ship collide in Ibaraki port

Alcohol involved?

Alcohol involved?

Could be.

Switching gears:

"Since visibility was supposed to be good, we are continuing to gather information,"

Hope they'll probe the cause of the collision ASAP.

At 5.35 Am I would have thought it would have been dark, the fishing boat should have had navigation and marking lights, if they were not on, why not? as for being picked up on the ships radar, something as small as as this fishing boat might not have been picked up especially if it was close to the big freighter. Either way a sad and tragic end to a fishing trip.

This article reminds me of a story I was told, long ago, about a freighter that collided with fishing boats, more than once.

It was during World War II. The fellow I talked to was on a freighter, running beef and butter up from Argentina, picking up a deck cargo in the US, and then taking it all to Britain. At night, they ran blacked out, for fear of submarines. They did not have radar. He told me that more than once they found wooden wreckage on the bow of their ship in the morning, as they transited the Caribbean Sea. The assumption was that it was probably from fishing boats that they had accidentally collided with at night.

It is one of those stories that stuck with me. No one was happy about the outcome, but there was no solution.

It’s mostly overestimating physical parameters like the own speed or the own mass, which means thinking of being fast enough to pass another ship’s course or if comparing the own ship with the other, thinking that only a very small damage will happen in case of a collision. But you cannot trick the rules taught in your physics lessons, if you ever attended some, you know that. Re-read your formulas describing relationships of kinetic energy, force, mass, speed, acceleration and such alike for reference, while you still can.

One of the ship masters will be arrested and charged with the maritime version of professional negligence resulting in death.