The Black Tide

Nevertheless, almost another hour went by before the master finally requested the coastguards to inform Lloyd’s that tug assistance was required. This delay may have been due to the Petros Jupiter contacting other ships in the vicinity. It would certainly explain why she did not speak direct on W/T with Telecom International at the Land’s End radio station, all their messages being routed through Land’s End coastguard station on VHF.

The tug left immediately, steaming out past Pendennis Point at 03.27 with an ETA at the probable position of the drifting tanker of about 06.30. By then Falmouth coastguards had alerted the Naval Flag Officer, the Sennen lifeboat had been put on stand-by and the duty officer at the Department of Trade’s Marine Division, Sunley House, High Holborn, had

been informed and had immediately called the retired admiral who headed the Marine Pollution Control Unit.

As anticipated by the forecast, the weather was now worsening rapidly so that by 04.00 the wind was force 8, gusting 9, and the tug, out from under the lee of the Lizard and punching westward into heavily breaking seas, was forced to reduce speed. Shortly before 05.00 the tug master contacted the Petros Jupiter and informed her master that owing to heavy seas his ETA would now be 07.30 or even later.

By then the tide had turned, wind and tide pushing the ship in a north-easterly direction. Falmouth coastguards, plotting the shifting direction of the tidal stream between Land’s End and the Scillies, calculated that with a wind drift of approximately one knot the ship would go aground in the vicinity of the Longships about an hour before the tug could reach her. This warning was passed to the master and the advice repeated to let go his anchors when he was in a depth that would give him sufficient scope of chain. In the weight of wind and, with the seas now big, the chain would almost certainly snap, but there was just a chance that the anchors might hold long enough for the north-going tide to take the tanker clear of the Longships and, with the extra fetch provided by Whitesand Bay, the tug might still get a line on board before she struck.

Meanwhile, the secretary of the Sennen lifeboat, in consultation with his cox’n, had decided to launch. The time of launch was 04.48 and the lifeboat reached

the casualty at 06.07. By then the Petros Jupiter, with two anchors down and her bows pointed in the general direction of the Wolf Rock, was barely a mile from the Longships. An hour later, as dawn began to break, first one anchor chain, then the other parted, and the lifeboat, which was lying in the lee of the tanker’s stern, reported the grey granite tower of the lighthouse just visible through mists of wind-blown spray and driving snow. It was very close, the cox’n radioed.

It was a dark, cold dawn, full of scudding clouds. A Sea King helicopter from RNAS Culdrose, hovering overhead, taking photographs and checking for pollution, gave the distance between the tanker’s stern and the lighthouse as barely 500 metres. The pilot also reported that he could see no sign of the tug. This information was passed to the MPCU at Sunley House, which was now fully manned and already operating on the assumption of a major disaster, alerting tugs and aircraft fitted with spraying equipment and arranging for the transportation of stock-piled dispersants to Land’s End.

The Petros Jupiter struck at 07.23, but not on the Longships. By then she had drifted clear of the lighthouse and the sunken ledges on which it was built, and with the wind veering, and the direction of the tidal stream already changing, she went on to the shallow reef southwest of the Shark’s Fin, swung round and finished up with her stern almost touching the flat of the rock known as Kettle’s Bottom.

The tug did not reach the casualty until almost an hour later, and though the wind had eased by then,

the seas were still very confused and it was another hour and a half before a line was got across to the tanker’s bows. The first attempt to tow her off was made shortly after 10.00.