Drone Crashes Into Vintage British Ship

Britain’s ex-defense minister found himself embroiled in a naval snafu last week as an errant drone crashed into a vintage cruise ship in Liverpool.

Ex-Defence Secretary Michael Portillo was filming a historical documentary aboard the MV Balmoral when he witnessed one of the production’s quadcopter nose-dive into a flagpole and ricochet into the ship’s surprised bosun. The crewman was reportedly shaken but otherwise uninjured.

“The drone was supposed to film Portillo on the stern, but it collided with the shop, and bounced off our bosun,” said Balmoral spokesman Paul Doubler in a media statement. “He was fine in the end, and no member of public was hurt. We’re disappointed this happened.”

Portillo chose the 1949-era ship as a filming location for a documentary The Enemy Files about a World War I-era Irish Republican uprising. Eyewitness and fellow passenger Kenneth Ford said the production had set up for a dramatic aerial film shot when the drone crashed.

“We could see the drone circling in the sky above us, but it all went wrong when it came down, and got entangled in the stern flag, and took out one of the crew men,” Ford told the Mirror. “It was pretty chaotic.” Portillo served as British Defense Secretary under Prime Minister John Major from 1995-97.

The crash comes at a time when the debate over drone regulation is heating up in the UK. In March, the Independent revealed a legal loophole in Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) rules that allows civilian UAVs to fly over “sensitive areas,” including several royal estates.

The Independent adds:

“CAA [the British counterpart of the FAA] rules do ban drones from congested urban areas, nuclear power plants, military sites, high-security prisons and airports, while elsewhere they must remain at least 50m away from any person, building or vehicle and are not allowed to go above 122m in attitude. However there have been calls for rules to be toughened and this week [in March] a House of Lords report called for ‘geo-fencing’ to hardwire ‘no-fly’ zones into drones.”

In July, the CAA reported a close call after an Airbus A320’s wing passed 20 feet below a drone hovering at Heathrow and the agency claims it recorded six other incidents between May 2014 and March 2015 at airports around the UK in which drones and piloted craft almost collided.