Unless they’re being peppered with rockets fired by maniacs, we don’t generally read much about shipping in the papers. The exceptions come when things haven’t gone well. Not so long ago, a container ship outward bound from Southampton grounded spectacularly in the Solent and remained lying on her bilge for several days. The crew were taken off and, realising that there was now no danger to life, every yacht sailor on the coast thoroughly enjoyed the video footage and the purple descriptions in the national press about the ‘stricken vessel’. It turned out that she had developed a dangerous list and that the pilot and captain put her ashore on the Bramble Bank rather than risk her capsizing in deep water.
As strandings go, this one was unusual. More typically, they result from good old human error. Commander Bill Anderson, RN Retd, my ex-boss in the Yachtmaster examining
