There be treasure on that beach! – The wreck of the MSC Napoli

The South-West coast of England once had a reputation for being one of the most dangerous places ever for ships to transit, not just because of the sharp rocks and unpredictable seas but because there had always been rumours of the locals on shore setting up lights in order to confuse the ships and ground them on purpose, taking the spoils of the shipwrecks for themselves and gaining the reputation as what we now know were nicknamed “The Wreckers.”

But in the modern day we don’t see Wreckers any more, but in 2007 an incident occurred that brought back to light the long held reputation of ships grounding and the cargoes being taken away by those on the land. This is the story of the container vessel MSC Napoli.

Built in South Korea and launched in 1991, she had gone through several name changes before being renamed MSC Napoli and travelled around the world carrying thousands of huge containers at any one time. At 53,000 gross tons, she was 904 feet long and carried a crew of just 26 people.

On 18^th January 2007 she was on a voyage from Belgium to Portugal when the vessel encountered a storm in the English Channel and started getting into difficulty. 50 miles from Cornwall she developed damage to the hull and so it was decided that the ship had to be abandoned and a distress call was sent.

Royal Navy helicopters rescued all her crew from the lifeboat and the ship was taken in tow and beached at Branscombe Bay to prevent her sinking and taking her 2318 containers with her. With the ship safely on the bottom it was thought that a successful salvage operation could now be conducted, but the weather had other ideas.

Her containers were now unstable as the ship was listing from taking on water and before long several fell from her decks and floated around in the sea. Some had already run aground in France as the ship had been taking on water but being so close to land now they were coming straight onto the beach.

This is where the scavenging began. As each container washed ashore, people flocked to the beaches nearby and broke open those that weren’t already damaged. Inside they found dozens of BMW motorbikes, shoes and entire household removals amongst the thousands of valuable items that were quickly taken away.

By law the finder of such items has to declare it to the Receiver of Wreck and they will find the owner and offer a reward for recovery. If no owner is found then after 366 days the finder is offered the item. But this was clearly not happening here as more and more cargo washed ashore and very little was being declared.

The police were called to patrol the area and the beaches ended up being closed off as the front pages of the national newspapers showed people rolling the BMW motorbikes from the beach and taking them away. Without declaring these items, these finds were technically being stolen. One family who had packed their entire house in one of these containers had to watch it on TV being taken apart from another country, helpless to do anything about it.

With the looters now held back and the visitors no longer clogging the roads up, a salvage operation started once the weather was good enough and for the next two years the remaining containers were carefully extracted from the wreck until finally the ship was empty of cargo and pollutants. After it was found that the MSC Napoli was in no fit state to be salvaged intact, the ships stern was blown off with explosives and scrapped on site, the bow being towed to Belfast to be scrapped there.

The anchor from the MSC Napoli remained at Branscombe with a commemorative plaque as a monument to the drama that took place here and a reminder that despite all efforts, shipwrecks still happen on this coast.