Cargo Ship Sinks: 13 Rescued from Freezing North Sea after Baltic Ace Collision, 5 Dead, 'Virtually Zero' Chance of Survival for 6 still Missing [PHOTOS]

Late Wednesday evening (Dec. 5), the cargo ship Baltic Ace sank after violently colliding with the Corvus J container ship in the treacherous North Sea miles off the coast of the Netherlands. Recently released infra-red pictures taken by the Royal Netherlands Navy capture the stunning scene as rescue missions manage to pull 13 surviving crew members from the icy cold waters. While there are so far five deaths accounted for, six men of the 24-member crew are still missing at sea. The Dutch Coastguard reports that the rescue operation has since been called off, considering the chances of the remaining missing crew members actually being alive at this point are "virtually zero."

The cause of the collision is yet unknown, but the manager of the car carrier claims that human error is probably to blame for the violent collision (considering the vessel was just five years old and in very good shape, technical failure was very unlikely). The crash resulted in 1,400 new cars plummeting to the bottom of the freezing sea (mostly Mitsubishis from Japan and Thailand).

According to Panagiootis Kakoliris, the operations manager at Stamco Ship Management Co. Ltd, "We had a very violent collision which was the reason for the quick sinking of the vessel. It was most probably hit in the side and that's why water entered in huge quantities with this result. You cannot control some things. This happened in good weather, normal weather. There was good visibility, so I feel most probably there was a human error."

The 12 crew members onboard the Corvus J went unharmed, although the carrier was badly damaged. Reports confirm that the Polish captain of the Baltic Ace was recently released from a local hospital.

The Baltic Ace - which was traveling on the populated Noord Hinder shipping route from Zeebrugge - sank within 15 minutes after hitting the Corvus J. The crew, mostly made up of sailors from Bulgaria, Poland, the Ukraine, and the Philippines, were forced to quickly abandon ship. The rescue search, hindered by high winds and rough seas, managed to rescue 13 survivors. Five bodies were also recovered. The rescue mission was called off at 2 a.m. on Thursday morning and resumed around dawn, but was again called off by the afternoon - Peter Westenburg of the Dutch Coast Guard insists that, "Given the water temperature and the amount of time that's passed, we don't have any hope for more survivors."

While the identities of the crew members (survived, missing, and dead) have yet to be released, reports confirm that four of the survivors were flown to a hospital in Rotterdam and seven to a military hospital in Belgium and that all are expected to recover.

Six crew members still remain lost at sea.