"It's such a phenomenon, it's everywhere.

The captain of a cargo ship that collided with an oil tanker in the North Sea has appeared in court charged with gross negligence manslaughter over the death of a crew member.The Portuguese-flagged Solong and US-registered tanker Stena Immaculate crashed off the East Yorkshire coast at about 10:00 GMT on Monday.

Filipino national Mark Angelo Pernia, 38, was named as the crew member of the Solong who was missing and presumed dead, the Crown Prosecution Service said.Vladimir Motin, 59, of Primorsky in St Petersburg, Russia, captain of the Solong, did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody by Hull magistrates to appear before the Central Criminal Court in London on April 14.Mr Motin stood in the glass-front dock at Hull Magistrates' Court for the 35-minute hearing.

He spoke through a translator to confirm his name, age and address, and that he understood the charges.The court heard how all 23 people on the tanker were rescued along with 13 of 14 crew members from the Solong but that Mr Pernia could not be located.

Humberside Police arrested Mr Motin on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter on Monday evening, hours after the collision.

The force said he had been charged on Friday evening."We talk about the impact of heavy casualties on the

[units comprising men for the same area, workplace or social group] but the fall of Singapore was just as devastating on these communities," he said."It's beyond imagination, really, because everybody's gone in the battalion at the same time, down to the lowest private, and there's a lack of information and clarity about what's happened to them for months and, in some cases, years."

Many of those who survived - like Tom Allard from Swaffham, Norfolk - could never bring themselves to talk about their treatment at the hands of the Japanese army, according to Swaffham Museum archivist Sue Gattuso.Conscripted into the Suffolk Regiment, Mr Allard "described how he was captured and marched to Changi Prison with the shells falling all around them", she said.