A Royal Navy officer from Perthshire who was in charge of a racing yacht which collided with an oil tanker during Cowes Week has been ordered to pay more than £100,000 in court costs and fined £3,000 after being found guilty of three counts of contravening maritime regulations.
Roland Wilson, a lieutenant in the RN Reserves, was convicted of failing to keep a proper lookout and two counts of impeding the passage of a vessel following a five-day trial at Southampton Magistrates’ Court.
The court heard the 32-year-old was in charge of the 33ft (19.8m) yacht Atalanta of Chester which was in collision with the 869ft (265m) Hanne Knutsen on the first day of the sailing regatta in August 2011 despite the married father-of-one, from Stanley, having seen the tanker from five miles away..embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; padding-top: 30px; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; height: auto; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }
This footage of the incident, in which one crew member suffered minor head injuries and another abandoned ship, has been viewed almost a million times.
District Judge Anthony Callaway fined Wilson £2,000 for the offence of failing to keep a proper lookout and £500 for each of the two offences of impeding the passage of a vessel and ordered him to pay a £15 victim surcharge. The maximum penalty was £5,000 on each charge.
But he was ordered to pay the full costs of the prosecution, which totalled £100,056.68.
The court heard that a substantial part of these costs was to pay for expert witnesses who examined and reconstructed the routes taken by the two vessels in the run-up to the collision.
Saying that bringing the case was in the public interest, Charles Row, prosecuting, said to Judge Callaway: “As you made clear in your judgment, by the grace of God, there could have been an absolute catastrophe.”
Judge Callaway said he respected Wilson’s crew, which included highly-ranked former RN officers, but ruled that the skipper had made the wrong decision and placed his yacht and the tanker in danger.