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British Vessel Sinks In North Sea; Five Feared Dead

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy Nees

BERLIN/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – German rescuers halted a search for four missing crew members of a British cargo ship that sank in the North Sea early on Tuesday morning following a rare crash in Europe’s busy waters.

At least one person died after the British vessel Verity and the Polesie, which sails out of Poland but is registered in the Bahamas, collided in the North Sea, according to investigators.

They smashed into one another at around 5 a.m. local time on Tuesday 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) southwest of Heligoland, a small rocky island north of Germany.

The Verity departed the German port city of Bremen at about 7 pm Monday local for Immingham, a key trading port in Lincolnshire, eastern England.

Of the seven-person crew on board the Verity, only two were rescued, German rescuers said, as the 91-meter (299-foot)-long ship sank some 100 feet (30 meters) below the surface, investigators said.

Because of modern navigation equipment, such collisions are rare despite the global increase in ship traffic, according to experts.

But this morning, the search and rescue effort was called off, with strong currents stymying divers and eating into the 20-hour-long chance of survival the castaways had, authorities said.

A spokeswoman for the German rescue charity jointly leading the operation told German media: “We have done everything humanely possible.”

None of the 22 crew on the Polesie was hurt. The cause of the collision was still unclear on Wednesday.