Close quarters: Navigating the aftermath of a vessel collision

This article explores the first 24 hours after a vessel collision in British Columbia waters: who to call, what to preserve, and what to say.

Consider a familiar kind of morning on the coast. Fog has settled over the Strait of Georgia before dawn. A tug with a loaded barge on a long towline is crossing the Strait, while a deep-sea bulk carrier, pilot on the bridge, works its way toward English Bay. The two converge; there is a jolt, the scrape of steel, and a very long day begins.

In the hours that follow, each master will be expected to help the other vessel, notify a string of federal and sometimes provincial authorities, secure evidence and answer questions from investigators whose purposes differ sharply. What is said and written in that window can shape everything that follows, from regulatory enforcement to a civil trial years later. This piece maps those duties, and the protections that come with them, with a focus on British Columbia. It is a general overview only: the answer in a given case will turn on the vessels involved, the location of the collision and its consequences.

Why B.C. waters raise the stakes

The B.C. coast supports a remarkably diverse mix of maritime traffic. Ocean-going ships calling at the Port of Vancouver share the Salish Sea with ferries, tugs and tows, fishing boats, floatplanes and a large recreational fleet, and the approaches through the Juan de Fuca Strait, Haro Strait and Boundary Pass are managed jointly by the Canadian and United States coast guards.¹

Whatever the setting, the governing law is federal. The Constitution assigns matters related to navigation and shipping to Parliament,² and collisions on the coast, or on navigable lakes and rivers inside the province, are decided under Canadian maritime law, a single body of national law, rather than under provincial statutes on negligence or on claims by the families of those killed.³ The Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed, in a case involving a pleasure craft that had set out from Vancouver Harbour, that recreational boating is no exception.⁴ 

The central statute is the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 (“CSA 2001”). Broadly speaking, it reaches Canadian vessels wherever they are and foreign vessels while they are in Canadian waters, but it does not govern military vessels.⁵ The rules of the road are found in the Collision Regulations, which adopt the international collision rules (“COLREGs”) with Canadian modifications⁶ and govern every vessel, a term defined to include a seaplane on the water.⁷ After any collision, investigators and courts start with the basics: how each vessel kept its lookout, what speed it was making, whether it recognized the developing risk, how early and decisively it acted, whether a small vessel impeded one that could navigate only within a narrow channel and, for aircraft on the water, whether the seaplane kept clear.⁸

At the scene: duties that arise on impact

Stand by and help
Section 148 of the CSA 2001 places two obligations on each vessel’s master, or whoever else is in charge of it. The first is humanitarian. So far as it can be done without putting their own vessel, crew or passengers at risk, they must give the other vessel and the people aboard it whatever help is needed to save them from dangers created by the collision, and must remain nearby until satisfied that no further help is required.⁹ International law obliges every flag State to demand the same of its masters.¹⁰ Parliament treats a breach of this duty as one of the gravest under the Act: on summary conviction, it carries a maximum fine of $1,000,000 and a maximum prison term of 18 months, which may be combined.¹¹

Identify your vessel
The second obligation is identification. Each must tell the other the vessel’s name, the name and address of its authorized representative and any further information the regulations prescribe.¹² Ignoring this duty is also an offence, though a less serious one, and Transport Canada can deal with it through an administrative monetary penalty rather than a prosecution.¹³

Don’t leave: the Criminal Code
Criminal law follows mariners onto the water. The failure-to-stop offence in the Criminal Code applies to any “conveyance”, a term that includes a vessel, and a person “operates” a vessel by navigating it, helping to navigate it or having care or control of it.¹⁴ An operator who knows, or is reckless as to whether, the vessel has been in an accident with a person or another conveyance must stop, provide a name and address and, where someone is hurt or appears to need help, offer assistance; failing to do so without reasonable excuse is an offence.¹⁵ It carries up to 10 years’ imprisonment on indictment, 14 years if someone is injured and life imprisonment if someone dies.¹⁶ For recreational boaters on the coast and on the Province’s lakes, who have no reporting obligation to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (“TSB”), these may be the most consequential rules discussed here.

Criminal exposure is not confined to vessels that flee. After BC Ferries’ Queen of the North struck Gil Island and sank in 2006, a jury convicted the officer of the watch of two counts of causing death by criminal negligence, and the conviction survived appeal to the British Columbia Court of Appeal.¹⁷ That prospect alone justifies care with statements from the first hour.

The first hour: who must be told

Once lives and vessels are safe, reporting begins, and it runs on several tracks at once: the TSB, the Canadian Coast Guard’s Marine Communications and Traffic Services (“MCTS”) centres, Transport Canada and, in port, the port authority. Pollution, a sinking, a death or an injured worker each bring in further recipients.

The Transportation Safety Board
Among the marine occurrences that must be reported under the Transportation Safety Board Regulations is any case in which a ship “is involved in a collision or a risk of a collision”.¹⁸ Both terms are broad. A collision is any impact between ships, or between a ship and another object, that is not part of normal operations, so hitting a wharf, a bridge pier or an anchored ship qualifies. A risk of collision exists whenever a ship comes close enough to a collision that people, property or the environment are put in danger. A genuine near miss is therefore reportable even if nothing touches.¹⁹

The duty rests on everyone with direct knowledge of the occurrence (the operator, whether or not it owns the ship, the master, the pilot, each crew member and the harbour master). In relation to any ship other than a pleasure craft.²⁰ The Board may relieve others of the need to repeat what one reporter has already supplied.²¹ The initial report must be made as soon as possible by the fastest means available, and anything missing must be supplied as it comes to hand, within 30 days.²² Usefully, a report to a “radio ship reporting station”, a category that includes MCTS centres, is treated as a report to the Board.²³ The content requirements are detailed. Among other things, the report must identify the ship, give the time and place of the occurrence and the names of those in charge, state whether a voyage data recorder (“VDR”) is fitted and what has been done to save its data, and describe the damage, any casualties, the weather and any protective steps taken.²⁴

The Regulations also freeze the evidence. Whoever holds or controls evidence relating to the occurrence must keep it intact unless the Board directs otherwise. Safety still comes first and necessary safety measures may be taken, but where it can be done, the evidence must be recorded beforehand by the best available means and the Board told how that was done.²⁵ On the bridge, that means saving the VDR before it overwrites itself and securing electronic chart, radar, AIS and engine records, logbooks and any video.

Pleasure craft sit outside this regime; their operators and crews have no TSB reporting obligation. When a pleasure craft collides with a working vessel, whether a ferry, a water taxi or a tug and tow, those on the working vessel must still report.

MCTS and the new VTS rules
Vessel traffic services were reorganized this year. On March 31, 2026, the new Vessel Traffic Services Zones Regulations came into force, folding three older sets of VTS regulations into one.²⁶ Part 2 covers the Western VTS Zones, which take in the Victoria and Prince Rupert zones along the B.C. coast.²⁷ The Regulations capture ships of 300 gross tonnage and up, towing or pushing combinations of 500 gross tonnage and up, and vessels carrying pollutants or dangerous goods. In the Western zones, many vessels 20 metres or longer are covered as well, with carve-outs for smaller pleasure craft and fishing vessels.²⁸

For a covered vessel, the master must see that a report goes in as soon as feasible after learning that the vessel has been in a collision, grounding or striking, or that pollutant is in the water. South-coast reports will usually go to Victoria Traffic; those from northern waters or from the approaches off western Vancouver Island, to Prince Rupert Traffic.³⁰

One trap is peculiar to this coast. Under the Canada–United States Co-operative Vessel Traffic Services arrangement, the United States Coast Guard’s Seattle Traffic serves the Juan de Fuca Strait, Victoria Traffic handles Haro Strait and Boundary Pass, and vessels in either country’s territorial waters must take part.³¹ The TSB Regulations, however, deem only reports to Canadian stations to be reports to the Board. A master who reports a Juan de Fuca collision to Seattle Traffic should therefore make sure the TSB hears of it too, directly or through a Canadian MCTS centre.³²

Transport Canada’s casualty reports
Older but still in force, the Shipping Casualties Reporting Regulations add a separate Transport Canada track. A shipping casualty, accident or dangerous occurrence must be reported without delay, usually by radio, and a written account that identifies the probable cause must follow within 24 hours (or, where that cannot be done, at the earliest possible time).³³ That last requirement deserves care. A master asked to commit a probable cause to paper within a day, often before the facts are known, is creating a document that regulators, investigators and opposing parties may all read later. It should record facts, flag what is not yet known and avoid conclusions about fault. In practice, one well-organized call to MCTS often sets several of these processes in motion, but none of the written follow-ups can be skipped.

The port authority
Inside the Port of Vancouver, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s Port Information Guide, which operates as the port’s practices and procedures under the Canada Marine Act, directs that collisions and groundings be reported to MCTS and the port authority by VHF or telephone, and the port’s Operations Centre runs around the clock.³⁴ The harbour master, for its part, is one of those who must notify the TSB.³⁵

Oil in the water
A collision that releases oil or another pollutant, or threatens to, engages the reporting scheme of the Vessel Pollution and Dangerous Chemicals Regulations, including updates as the picture develops.³⁶ On the B.C. coast, the practical first call is the Canadian Coast Guard’s 24-hour pollution line, which can be reached at 1-800-889-8852.³⁷ If the spill could reach shore, a second call to the Province’s Emergency Coordination Centre should be made at 1-800-663-3456, the number set out in British Columbia’s Spill Reporting Regulation.³⁸

A vessel lost
If a vessel goes down or is wrecked, its master and operator must report the wreck without delay to an MCTS officer or another designated person.³⁹ The owner must take reasonable steps to mark it, can be ordered to locate, mark or remove it, and will pay for measures taken in relation to it.⁴⁰

Fatalities and injured workers
First of all, a fatality brings in the coroner. British Columbia’s Coroners Act obliges anyone with reason to believe that a death resulted from an accident to report it immediately to a coroner or a peace officer, and coroners can inspect and seize records and anything else relevant to their inquiry.⁴¹ Where the death occurs aboard a Canadian vessel, a federal inquiry is also possible.⁴²

Otherwise, when injuries occur to employees, it raises a jurisdictional question. Employers regulated provincially, a group that includes many commercial fishing operations, must report serious injuries and deaths to WorkSafeBC immediately.⁴³ Federally regulated marine employers instead report hazardous occurrences to Transport Canada under Part II of the Canada Labour Code.⁴⁴ Which regime governs is not always obvious and provincial workers’ compensation schemes can operate even where the underlying claim is one of Canadian maritime law.⁴⁵

What non-compliance can cost

The CSA 2001 makes contraventions of the Act and its regulations punishable offences. At the top of the scale, where a failure to assist after a collision sits, the maximum is a $1,000,000 fine, 18 months in prison or both.⁴⁶ Transport Canada can also impose administrative monetary penalties, which since April 2024 reach $250,000 per violation for vessels and corporations at the serious end.⁴⁷ Leaving the scene of an accident is a Criminal Code offence punishable by imprisonment for life where someone dies.⁴⁸ Most regulatory offences are strict liability offences, so an accused can avoid conviction by proving that it took all reasonable care.⁴⁹ Good records of compliance, and of the response to the casualty, are the raw material of that defence.

When the investigators arrive

Many investigations, many purposes
A serious collision can set off several investigations at once: a TSB safety investigation, a Transport Canada compliance and enforcement file, police and coroner investigations if people are hurt or killed, inquiries by the port authority and, where foreign ships are involved, flag State investigations under the International Maritime Organization’s (“IMO”) Casualty Investigation Code.⁵⁰ Each has its own purpose and powers. Information given to one is not automatically shielded from the others, so it pays to know who is asking, and why.

Vancouver has a recent story to explain same. In June 2024, a departing floatplane and a pleasure craft collided together in Coal Harbour. The TSB began an investigation, and passengers from both craft, as well as the air operator itself, have since sued in the Supreme Court of British Columbia; the defendants named include NAV CANADA and the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. Those claims have yet to be tried.⁵¹

The TSB: safety, not blame
The TSB exists to find causes, not culprits. Apportioning blame and settling civil or criminal liability are outside its remit, and nothing it finds is binding in later legal, disciplinary or other proceedings.⁵² That does not mean the Board pulls its punches: it reports fully on causes and contributing factors even where readers may infer fault.⁵³ A local example is its investigation of a 2019 incident in Vancouver Harbour, where a pilot-conducted bulk carrier hit another bulk carrier lying at anchor; one of the Board’s findings concerned a breakdown in communication between the pilot and the ship’s bridge team.⁵⁴

TSB investigators can enter premises, examine and seize evidence and demand information.⁵⁵ The counterweight is strong statutory protection. What a witness tells the Board is privileged, as are “on-board recordings”, which for ships include voice recordings from the bridge or a control room.⁵⁶ A court or coroner can order a recording produced only after reviewing it in camera, then/or hearing from the Board and deciding that the public interest in the proper administration of justice outweighs the privilege.⁵⁷ The Supreme Court of Canada has set that bar high, confining disclosure to cases where the recording is essential to a fair resolution of the dispute and the same evidence is not reasonably available from another source.⁵⁸ Recordings also cannot be used against masters, officers, pilots or other crew members in disciplinary, competency or other legal proceedings,⁵⁹ and TSB investigators generally cannot be compelled to testify, nor are their opinions admissible.⁶⁰

The protection is real but narrow. It covers statements and recordings, not the facts themselves; positions, courses and speeds can be proved from other sources. Anyone the Board considers to have a direct interest will receive a confidential draft report and can comment before it is finalized,⁶¹ which is often the best opportunity to correct factual errors.

Transport Canada: an enforcement agency
Transport Canada plays a different role. Under the CSA 2001, its marine safety inspectors can board and examine a vessel, order it to stop or to move to a place they designate, put reasonable questions to those aboard and require their help, call for documents and take things away for analysis. Crew accommodation is the main exception: inspectors need the occupant’s consent or a warrant to go in.⁶²

Unlike statements to the TSB, what is said to an inspector enjoys no statutory privilege. Two Supreme Court of Canada cases from British Columbia mark out the constitutional boundaries. In R v White, a driver’s statements to police, made because provincial highway legislation required her to report an accident, could not be used against her at her criminal trial without violating the principle against self-incrimination protected by section 7 of the Charter.⁶³ In R v Fitzpatrick, on the other hand, a commercial fisher failed to keep out the hail reports and fishing logs he had filed as the price of participating in a regulated fishery; they were admitted in his prosecution for overfishing.⁶⁴ Reports made to MCTS and Transport Canada after a collision fall between those two cases, and masters should write them on the assumption that they will be read in later proceedings.

Regulators must also change hats at the right moment. In the Supreme Court of Canada’s words, once “the predominant purpose of a particular inquiry is the determination of penal liability”, officials must stop using their inspection and compulsion powers, and full Charter protections apply.⁶⁵ The constitutional right to counsel arises on arrest or detention,⁶⁶ but nothing stops a master, officer or crew member from asking for time to obtain legal advice before a formal interview. They should.

Foreign seafarers in B.C. ports can point to the Guidelines on Fair Treatment of Seafarers in the Event of a Maritime Accident, adopted by the IMO and the International Labour Organization, which ask port and coastal States to tell seafarers about their rights to independent legal advice and against self-incrimination, and to arrange interpretation where needed.⁶⁷ Location matters too. For a collision beyond Canada’s territorial sea, off the west coast of Vancouver Island for example, only the flag State or the State of nationality of the person concerned may bring penal or disciplinary proceedings against the master or crew, and only the flag State may order the ship arrested or detained, even for investigation.⁶⁸

Protecting the owner’s own inquiry
Owners and insurers will want their own investigation, and quickly. Routine incident reports generated under a safety management system will rarely be privileged. Documents prepared for the dominant purpose of litigation that is reasonably in prospect are privileged, and British Columbia courts have applied that test to accident investigations for more than three decades.⁶⁹ Litigation privilege is a class privilege, and a general statutory power to demand documents does not override it unless the statute does so in clear and explicit terms.⁷⁰ The safest course is an investigation run by counsel and kept apart from routine safety reporting.

Engage, but stay in your lane
None of this is a reason to stonewall. A timely and accurate response to every lawful requirement usually serves a vessel’s interests far better than resistance. The discipline lies in scope: witnesses should speak to what they saw and did, avoid guessing at causes or blame, and refer any doubt about whether a request is mandatory to counsel.

The liability clock

Civil liability follows fault. Each vessel is liable in proportion to its share of the fault and, where shares cannot be separated, liability is split equally.⁷¹ Those at fault answer jointly and severally to injured parties, except that between the colliding ships themselves, liability for damage to the ships, their cargo and other property aboard, and for lost earnings, is several only.⁷² The clock is short. A claim against a ship in collision, or its owners, for that kind of loss, or for death or injury to anyone aboard the other ship, must be started within two years, although the court can extend the time.⁷³

Owners may also be able to cap their exposure. Part 3 of the Marine Liability Act gives the force of law to the 1976 Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims.⁷⁴ For ships under 300 gross tonnage, a class that takes in most pleasure craft, fishing vessels and water taxis and many tugs, the caps have stood at $1,500,000 for loss of life or personal injury and $750,000 for other claims since June 22, 2023.⁷⁵ Limits are seldom broken. Under Article 4 of the Convention, the claimant must prove that the loss resulted from the defendant’s “personal act or omission, committed with the intent to cause such loss, or recklessly and with knowledge that such loss would probably result”.⁷⁶

Claims can be brought in the Federal Court, whose maritime jurisdiction expressly covers damage, death and injury caused by a ship in collision or otherwise and which can proceed in rem against the ship itself, enabling the arrest of the vessel as security for a claim, or in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, which shares jurisdiction over maritime claims.⁷⁷

A first-day checklist

□  Assist, stand by and exchange particulars; log times, positions and communications.
□  Call Victoria Traffic or Prince Rupert Traffic, make sure the TSB is notified, and diarize the 24-hour and 30-day written reporting follow-ups.
□  Inside the Port of Vancouver, alert the port authority’s Operations Centre.
□  Save the VDR and preserve electronic records, logbooks and communications.
□  Report pollution to the Coast Guard (1-800-889-8852) and, if the shoreline is at risk, to the Province (1-800-663-3456).
□  Report deaths to a coroner or the police, and worker injuries to WorkSafeBC or Transport Canada as applicable.
□  Notify insurers, retain counsel and set up a privileged internal investigation.
□  Give crew access to independent legal advice (and interpretation) before formal interviews and diarize the two-year limitation period.
□  File the TSB &Transport Canada reports within the required 24-hour and 30-day timeframes.

Please click here to view the article’s footnotes.

No two collisions unfold the same way. To discuss a particular casualty, any of the reporting and investigation issues raised here, or any other maritime or Admiralty matters, please get in touch with the author.

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