The captain of the Commodore Goodwill at the time the freight ship fatally collided with the L’Ecume II fishing trawler has given evidence in court.
Captain Zelazny was in his cabin on a mandatory rest break when he was called back to the ship’s bridge on the morning of 8 December 2022.
He told the jury in the trial of the two Condor ferry workers accused of causing the deaths of three fisherman that he heard the freight vessel’s horn sound ‘five or more times’ in ‘short blasts'.
Captain Zelazny said ‘soon after’ he ‘heard a noise, as if brushing a hand against a curtain’.
The court heard it was ’minutes after’ when he received a call from Second Officer Lewis Carr asking him to return to the bridge.
Prosecuting, Crown Advocate Matthew Maletroit asked Captain Zelazny whether Lewis Carr told him there had been a collision or gave a reason as to why he needed to return to the bridge, to which the Captain responded ‘no’.
READ: L’Ecume II: Jury shown radar images in the moments leading up to collision
The captain told the jury that when he returned to the bridge he ‘focused on the task at hand’ and the morning turned into a ‘blur’ due to the ‘high intensity’.
He said everything ‘happened in a matter of seconds’ and he reduced the speed and altered the ship’s course to take them back to the site of the collision.
Captain Zelazny said: “I was hoping to recover people” and “I was hoping to assist”.
READ: L'Ecume II: "One of the most knowledgeable fishermen" worried about large vessels
Crown Advocate Maletroit asked whether there was a reason why the ship could not have been turned around sooner, to which the captain replied ‘no’.
When the prosecution asked Captain Zelazny about the reasoning for the ship’s rule of keeping a distance of at least one nautical mile rule from other vessels at sea, especially fishing boats, he told the court ‘we didn’t want to be closer to any vessel than a mile… because it could lead to some dangerous situations’.
Pressed specifically about fishing boats, the captain said it is ‘difficult to predict their behaviour’.
Captain Zelazny returns to the stand on Monday, 8 September 2025 when the trial of Second Officer Lewis Carr and look-out Artur Sevash-Zade continues.
Both defendants deny three counts of manslaughter.
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