Norwegian prosecutors have charged the navigator of a cargo ship after he allegedly fell asleep on duty and the vessel ran aground in one of the country’s fjords last week, narrowly missing crashing into a home.
The ship, the Cyprus-flagged NCL Salten, ran aground shortly before 6 am Thursday, stopping short of crashing into the house of Johan Helberg on the Trondheim Fjord’s coast.
The unnamed crewman was charged with negligent navigation.
No oil spills were reported and none of the 16 people aboard were injured.
Johan Helberg told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he’d slept through the whole thing and only woke up when a neighbour started ringing his doorbell.
“Five metres further south and it would have entered the bedroom,” he told NRK. “I didn’t hear anything.”
Images show the ship’s red and green bow just metres from Helberg’s house.
The on-duty navigator was the ship’s second officer, prosecutor Kjetil Bruland Sørensen said in a statement.
Crews on Monday continued to take containers off the ship so it could be more easily removed from the area.
Efforts to refloat the ship at high tide over the weekend were unsuccessful.
NCL, the shipping company, said it was cooperating with investigators.
