“With the angle of HI hitting Sola TS, I doubt she would have breached any cargo hold, and if she did it would be high up”
It was by sheer luck that the angle of impact turned out the way they did, thus preventing the tanker’s hull from being breached in the collision. You never know how the results of last-minute desperate actions to avoid collision will pan out.
A tanker’s hull-plating and frames aren’t strong enough to withstand a powerful collision with another large vessel. What could somewhat lessen the amount of oil escaping the cargo tanks is the double-hull construction of tankers. But even double-hull is no guarantee against a breach in case of a collision with another vessel or, a grounding incident on rocky sea-bed or, hitting a submerged object such as an abandoned anchor in shallow waters, if you’re so unlucky to hit that one spot. Another architectural feature that could ease the environmental impact would be the longitudinal and transverse watertight sub-divisions in the ships. But these are just mitigating design features. These features will help in maintaining damage-stability and will also allow the disaster response agencies the time they need to deploy heavy equipment like pumps and oil booms to contain the damage to the environment. In this incident, the luck played a bigger role than the humans involved in preventing the environmental tragedy. Some people like to call it ‘The hand of God’.