On Time
The trick is to be there and make sure you don’t miss any of the action. I have always been “lucky,” and managed to be on time for the main event. For example: I took all three of my boys on a touring holiday of the British Isles and on this particular day we were at a place called Wells-next-the-Sea. Wells is a small port that takes fishing boats and some coastal tramps. On this occasion I had just stopped the car near the quayside which is also the main street of the town. The river is at a right angle to the main street and dock. I happened to look up and there was a ship speeding down the river towards the town.
Jokingly, I said to the boys, “Wow! look at that, at his speed he’s going to finish up on the highway.” It certainly looked as though he would never make the 90-degree turn at the end of the river. We watched intently as this quite large ship came rushing down the river at a good 35 miles an hour. He did make the turn, but as he was running with the incoming tide he could not stop at the quayside. At the far end of the harbour is what the locals call the pool, a large open expanse of water where they are able to turn ships round and it also happens to be the place where hundreds of privately owned pleasure boats were parked and anchored. The ship dropped anchor and put the engine into full astern. Needless to say, it could not stop and ploughed into the crowd of private boats. Most moved aside but two or three were damaged by the impact and one began sinking. A woman standing beside me suddenly yelled, “I’m going to kill someone.” The ship stopped and the engine was still at full throttle in reverse. She backed up dragging her anchor. Almost cartoon like one 30-foot private cruiser suddenly upended and then in seconds dived below the water. The ship’s anchor must have caught her mooring chain and pulled the thing to its doom. The private vessel vanished from sight. “That’s my boat,” yelled the woman beside me. The fiasco was not quite at its conclusion. A sailor coiled a rope and on the instructions of a very agitated dock worker attempted to throw it. His puny effort resulted in the rope dropping into the water as the ship ploughed helplessly into a reed bank on the far side of the harbour, there to remain for several days. That was an exciting demonstration of incompetence I would have happily paid to watch. Later I spoke with a dock worker, and he told me that the ship came in without the aid of a pilot and also came in with the running tide, apparently that’s a no-no.
