Operators want ship suspected in collision Bond required to cover possible damages

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland – The Russian operators of an oil tanker implicated in a deadly collision with a U.S. fishing boat want their ship released from Canadian waters as civil lawsuits continue to pile up in the United States and Canada.

“We’d like to get the vessel back into trade,” Jim Lawrence, a spokesman from a U.S. public relations firm that represents Primorsk Shipping Corp. of Russia, said Wednesday.

But the ship, which allegedly rammed the fishing vessel Starbound on Aug. 5 and killed three fishermen, can’t be moved until it posts a bond to cover potential damages for the victims’ families and the company that owned the Starbound.

Three civil lawsuits filed with the Federal Court of Canada are seeking more than $13.5 million in U.S. funds in compensation. In the United States, similar lawsuits are seeking more than double that amount.

Primorsk Shipping will take part in a court hearing Monday to determine how much the bond will cost, Lawrence said from his office in Stamford, Conn.

The 180-meter ship remained tied up at Long Harbor, Newfoundland, about 60 miles southwest of St. John’s on Placentia Bay.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police completed its investigation late Monday and the ship, which has been certified as seaworthy, is in the hands of its crew.

But the ship remains under arrest because of the outstanding civil suit in Canada filed by Atlantic Mariner Inc., owners of the Starbound, based in Rockland, Maine.

The ship will not be granted permission to leave Placentia Bay if it attempts to leave, said St. John’s lawyer Cecily Strickland, who represents Atlantic Mariner.

“I would have no reason to think the owners of the Virgo would instruct the crew to do this,” she said, adding the Coast Guard would be called in if the ship made a run for it.

The Virgo was traveling between Boston and Come By Chance, Newfoundland, when the collision occurred in U.S. waters off the coast of Massachusetts, court documents allege.

Canadian authorities detained the tanker when it arrived at the refinery near Come By Chance on Aug. 7.

The U.S. Coast Guard alleges the tanker’s officers weren’t paying attention to radar screens and the ship was traveling too fast in rainy weather when it rammed the fishing boat. The Coast Guard also alleges the ship’s crew failed to offer assistance after the collision.

Information seized from the ship shows it was on a collision course with the Starbound for at least 45 minutes before the collision, a U.S. Coast Guard investigator said in an affidavit.

The Virgo’s captain, second officer and lookout were arrested in St. John’s last Wednesday. They each face a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the United States, pending an extradition hearing in Newfoundland.

But that process could take months, if not years, to complete.

On Wednesday, a court hearing in St. John’s was expected to determine when U.S. investigators would be given the evidence collected by the Mounties under a special international treaty.

Instead, the hearing focused only on “preliminary issues” leading up to another set of hearings, scheduled for Oct. 22-24, in St. John’s, said defense lawyer Robert Simmonds.