Finnish Tanker Hits Soviet Trawler, Killing 15 Aboard

Fifteen Soviet fishermen died after a Finnish oil tanker collided with their trawler shortly after midnight in busy shipping waters off the Swedish island of Gotland, rescue operators said today.

The 82-foot Soviet trawler Ladushkin sank just minutes after colliding with the 6,000-ton Tebostar as the tanker maneuvered among 14 Soviet trawlers in the Baltic.

“The crew was probably sleeping and didn’t even have time to get out of their berths,” said Waldemar Berlin, a rescue coordinator.

Only one man, the Ladushkin’s radio operator, was plucked from the sea 90 minutes after the accident. Already seriously injured, he was dead on arrival at a hospital.

Berlin said the rescue search was called off shortly after 8 a.m. because no one could have survived that long in the cold Baltic waters.

“We detected wreckage and some oil but nothing else,” Berlin said. “There were plenty of vessels in the area to help with the search and we had only a small area to cover.”

The Tebostar, sailing south with a 17-man crew from Finland to Amsterdam, had little damage from the collision.

“The captain of the Tebostar said he was trying to give way to one fishing boat but collided with another,” said Mats Jacobson, another rescue worker.

“It happened so quickly that the Finnish crew did not even know what they had hit,” he said.