On 3 March 2000, just after 09:07 (GMT+4), two very large tankers—PEARL and JAHRE VENTURE—collided in Fujairah “B” anchorage in the Gulf of Oman. Both were in ballast, lying to a single anchor, with other vessels nearby, and the weather had turned rough.
Think of two parked cars in a windy lot, except these “cars” are 270-meter and 370-meter ocean giants. PEARL lay to her starboard anchor with 10 shackles in the water; JAHRE VENTURE lay to her port anchor, also with 10 shackles. They were roughly 8 cables to a mile apart before things went wrong. The wind rose to strong gale force, visibility stayed good, and both ships started to yaw at anchor. Then JAHRE VENTURE began dragging generally eastward; later, the vessels made contact—JAHRE VENTURE’s forward starboard side against PEARL’s port bow area—at about a 70–80° angle.
From here, each side had a story. PEARL’s owner said JAHRE VENTURE dragged down on them and failed to use her engines in time. JAHRE VENTURE’s owner said PEARL was actually the one dragging and, in any case, could not heave up because of a faulty steam line to her windlass; they also argued a nearby bunker barge, MARKIZA, hampered JAHRE VENTURE’s ability to move. The judge sifted logs, GPS fixes, course records, and witness accounts.
First key finding: PEARL was indeed dragging her anchor—and the bridge team failed to appreciate it in time. The court relied on contemporaneous position fixes (including GPS and racon/radar) and expert nautical assessment showing every likelihood of dragging with only 10 shackles in ~110–120 m of water in Force 8–9 winds.
Second: JAHRE VENTURE’s main engines were ready by about 06:55, but there was no engine movement recorded until 07:50, and even then only brief, timid dead-slow/slow-ahead periods before the collision. The judge called this “culpable timidity” unless excused. The supposed excuse—that MARKIZA’s position made it unsafe to heave/steam—was rejected on the facts and nautical advice; distances meant JAHRE VENTURE could and should have acted earlier to keep clear.
Third: the steam line defect on PEARL (leaking flanges that disabled the windlass) was real and took about 80 minutes to fix. Legally, that defect created a presumption of negligence that PEARL had to rebut by showing it was latent or that due diligence had been exercised; the court found PEARL’s evidence “nowhere near” enough to excuse the failure.
Fourth: the VHF chatter (who said what and when) didn’t change the outcome. The judge treated inconsistencies as stress-time confusion, not decisive on fault. And a late argument that PEARL surged ahead into the impact was not accepted; with her anchor still down, any ahead movement was negligible—the apparent “closing” was largely JAHRE VENTURE’s swing into PEARL.
Putting the pieces together in plain terms:
PEARL should have realized earlier that she was dragging and, without a working windlass, should never have been left in that condition; the faulty steam line was her responsibility.
JAHRE VENTURE had power available but waited too long to use it effectively; the nearby barge did not make early, prudent action unsafe.
The court weighed whose mistakes mattered more. It looked at causative potency (how much each fault contributed) and blameworthiness. Yes, PEARL was the smaller, downwind ship and had a maintenance fault; but JAHRE VENTURE’s prolonged indecision after realizing she was dragging—without real justification from MARKIZA—was “inexplicable.” The bottom line: both ships were equally to blame. The apportionment was 50/50.
So the story ends not with a single villain but with two captains and crews caught by heavy weather and human hesitation. One ship couldn’t heave because of a preventable defect; the other wouldn’t move in time despite having the means. In the judge’s words, this was an eminently avoidable collision, and the fairest result was to split liability down the middle—half to PEARL, half to JAHRE VENTURE.
