Two people have been arrested after a fatal collision between Danish and British cargo ships.
Sweden’s Prosecution Service said in a statement that an investigation into ‘aggravated drunkenness at sea,’ ‘gross negligence in sea traffic,’ and ‘gross causing of death by negligence’ had been opened.
The pair arrested on Monday are a Brit born in 1991 and a Croat born in 1965, Sweden’s Prosecution Office said.
Pictures showed the damage to the two boats after the crash, which took place in waters between the Swedish city of Ystad and the Danish island of Bornholm.
Nine boats and a rescue helicopter scoured the water for two missing crewmembers following the early morning collision, the Swedish Maritime Administration said, adding that screams had been heard from the water.
‘The Scot Carrier [the other ship involved] released a smaller boat and looked for people and they heard screams from the water, but couldn’t find anyone,’ Jonas Franzen, communications director at the organisation, explained.
The other ship, the Karin Hoej, capsized and was upside down.
The search was cancelled at around 10.30am, when the overturned Danish ship was towed closer to shore to enable divers to search inside.
Shortly after 3pm, authorities decided to cancel the rescue operation, after divers had found a body in the wreck.
Police spokeswoman Evelina Olsson said: ‘The person is deceased, but the next of kin have not yet been informed yet.
Mats Kellerman, captain of one of the rescue boats, had already warned that ‘the chance of finding survivors is small,’ given the freezing temperature of the water and the time that had already passed without finding the missing pair.
Emma Valhem, spokeswoman for the Swedish Sea Rescue Society, said she did not want to speculate on the chances of finding the sailors alive.
But she added that with water temperatures around 4°C at this time of year, the ‘situation is critical, right from the start.’
The Danish shipping company operating the vessel believes there were two people in the crew and that they were believed to be the ones missing.
Meanwhile, moves to prevent oil or other hazardous materials from being released into the water are also under way.
Sweden’s coastguard said that there is currently no oil spill.
The waters around Sweden’s southern coast see heavy traffic, as all ships going into the Baltic Sea from the Atlantic need to pass through the strait between Sweden and Denmark.
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