Damn, I love the Devon coastline… hope they can siphon off the vast bulk of oil and other nasties before it’s too late. Not sure exactly what was the ‘backup plan’ when abandoning ship.
And the cargo?
Paraphrasing loosely from the BBC and elsewhere,
“Please do not even think about coming down to Devon to salvage the hundreds of thousands of valuable items, from casks of wine to perfume to BMW motorcycles to almost anything and everything else consumed in the developed world. In fact, our experts tell us that ’salvaging’ is not the same as ‘looting’, and is perfectly legal if you are sure to fill in a declaration form, just in case the goods need to be returned to their rightful owners one day. But we repeat, under no circumstances should you come down to Devon, where more than 2,000 additional shipping containers are poised to fall off the badly listing ship.”
I could not believe my ears. Doesn’t matter what they actually said – I can tell you what I thought I heard, and I can guarantee that many other people who had not even thought about the catastrophe in terms other than “poor ship”, “poor crew”, “poor coastline”, “poor birds” are suddenly thinking “Wait a minute… did they just say what I thought they said…”
So I suspect the “scores of scavengers” from today’s stories will be “thousands” within the next day or two.
Technorati Tags: scavenge, salvage, , container, ship, Napoli, shipwreck, Devon
February 14, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Yes, I had to laugh when the BBC person came on the news and announced that shipping containers full of highly expensive BMW motorbikes were being washed up on the shore. Doh! I mean if they’d said containers full of, oh, I don’t know, ping-pong balls and paper bags? were being washed up, then maybe a few people would wander down to take a look, but really…. talk about the media creating an event!