The Torrey Canyon disaster

“Black specks were coming in across the waves, some thrashing the water like torpedoes, others drifting in with the rising tide. They were the first Torrey Canyon birds I saw, desperately beating their way to safety before the advancing oil …You could see them flopping and struggling in a host of places around our shores, trying to walk and extricate themselves from the coagulation of oil and sand, their plumage plastered with it, helpless, silent, bewildered, innocent.” (Dorothy Yglesias in In Answer to the Cry) 

“There is a poor guillemot down there, beneath that granite boulder, on the blackened sand; and as the filthy tide comes in and starts to wash its dead, unfeeling body to and fro, it brings the pathos of our own sin and shame more closely home to us.” (Dororthy Yglesias in In Answer to the Cry) 

March 14th, 1967 –
the spring
of the summer
of LOVE.

The “supertanker”
SS Torrey Canyon,
owned by the Barracuda
Tanker Corporation,
(chartered by BP)
strikes Pollard’s Rock
on Seven Stones Reef –
between Cornwall
and the Isles of Scilly.

She spills
thirty-six million
gallons of crude oil
hot from the Persian Gulf,
into pristine waters:
the UK’s worst spill,
in living history.

An avoidable,
navigation “error,”
a “confusion”
between “master”
and “helmsman;”
a desire to save
half an hour.
(The problem
not rectified
in time.)

The ship
on automatic steering
hurtles at full speed
(at seventeen knots)
in broad day light.

The same date of approach
when large numbers
of sea birds
come up from the South
along old,
migration
routes.

Warning rockets
are fired
from the lightship.
But the captain
orders
“Full steam astern!”

There is a loud grinding
along the length
of her 1000ft keel
then the first stream
of Torrey Canyon’s
120,000 tons of oil
pour out.
Into the sea.

The Satanic Ark
belches
her bile-black venom
and begins to break up.

Detergent is deployed
on an unprecedented scale.

The British cabinet
instructs Culdrose
to set fire
to the doom vessel.

Forty-two 1000lb bombs
are dropped from sky.
After two days of war,
with the high tides,
the high seas,
she finally
sinks.

15,000 sea birds die.
Unaccountable,
(“huge numbers”) more,
are never found.

Millions of marine beings
perish –
because of the TOXICITY
made worse
by the “solvent-emulsifiers.”
(10,000 tons
of chemical poison
float on top of
the deathly oil.)

120 miles
of Cornish coast
lies contaminated.
(A further 50 miles,
off Brittany.)

The British government
is “strongly criticized”
for its man-handling
of the unfortunate,
international
“incident.”

David Bellamy,
(man of plants)
steps forward, cries out,
publishes a report
on this PLANETARY
disaster.

And Mousehole
opens its doors.

Black Death

A black death
of oil
was cast
upon the sea.

The ship
needed
to be saved!

(The captain
not yet ready
to abandon.)

A merciless,
man-made mess
was pumped.

The gale roared.
The surf boiled.
The waves swept
desperately.

A black tide.
A black Friday.

Overwhelming
the helpless.

Operation Bird Wash

Offers of help
came flooding in.
Mousehole rallied.
School boys collected
rags, towels, sponges,
boxes, straw, sheets.
Washing stations
were set up
all over the village.

The Penzance Playgoers
took consignments of birds
to clean and dry.
A nearby garage
was commandeered.
Recuperation homes
were found in Slimbridge,
Bristol, Taunton.

Letters arrived
with prayers, thanks, donations.
From America, Canada,
South Africa, Australia.
We had never
seen so much money
in all our lives.
Someone sent a box –
of golden daffodils.

Many said our efforts
were wasted;
that the birds should all
have been “destroyed”
on the beaches.

Others understood.
Compassion committed them
to preserving fellow lives,
to trying to make
some sort of amends.

Eight thousand victims
passed through our doors
in that one, manic month.

Aftermath

Thin and weak,
their feet and beaks
badly blistered –
having swum the gauntlet
of the oil,
only to be met
with the detergents
sprayed on
all the beaches.

Without warning
they would go
into convulsions –
screaming out
their agony.
Brain-damaged;
lungs broken.

There could be
only one answer
to that.

We helped them over
as humanely as we could –
using an injection.
Death was quick.

In the mornings,
we always found
a number had died
during the night.
We put their limp bodies
into sacks.

Our most haunting
memories
were when these sacks
were dragged
down the hospital steps:
too heavy
to be carried.

All that suffering;
all that dreadful
bumping.

Heidi Stephenson

Oil Spill From Wakashio