Risks and Hazards to mariners or for all?

I do quite a bit of scuba diving in my spare time with one of the main targets of my in-water time being wrecks, sure mostly shipwrecks but also submarine wrecks and aircraft wrecks, but today I thought I would waffle on about shipwrecks.

More specifically shipwreck caused by known hazards and in my neck of the woods known hazards equate to the Farne Islands as well as some of the reef systems that stick out from the mainland some distance to the open sea. Even more specifically Beadnell Point which has proved to be a very real hazard to mariners since time immemorial, so lets talk about it first.

Beadnell Point has been a popular spot for a very long time, there are the remains of a chapel dedicated to St Ebba, an abbess from the area who died in around 686AD, I am sure that it was a ‘spot’ before then, as it gives excellent views North to Lindisfarne and South to Dunstanburgh.

With such excellent views it's perhaps no surprise that this piece of rock is a very real hazard to shipping, with the last 'biggie' being MV Yewglen which ran aground in 1960, remember that date it's pre GPS and I doubt if a coastal vessel had the decca positional system fitted.

This loss was scavenged of all useful bits by a local chap who had a tractor and trailer plus oxy-acetylene torch, he cut the hull and had the huge diesel engine out and sold before the Lloyds agent surveyed the wreck.

But this isn't the only loss on Beadnell Point, SS Brugia ran up in 1900, again a total loss, ST Mistley ran up post WW1 in the 1920's and there are the remains of three more unidentified vessels on the South Side of the Point plus at least two on the North Side.

I would hope that there will be no more losses on this particular rock due to the advent of navigation and positional fixing using GPS...........

Hope springs eternal but you have to wonder. In March 2013 MV Danio ran aground on the Farne Islands, now this wasn't a tramp steamer, this was a modern cargo ship with all mod cons, yet the skipper set a course, rattled along Longstone and ran hard aground on the Blue Caps/Harcars reef system. You have to wonder how?

What has this got to do with hazards and risks?

The coast here is unchanged for milennia, the last big change to the Farne Islands was in the nineteenth century when one of the Pinnacles was shattered in the Great Storm, leaving behind the Broken Branch, however if you are close enough to the Pinnacles to count them and worrying about the Broken Branch then you will probably end up like SS St Andre, another total loss!

So, the hazards remain unchanged and with technology improving you would hope that the risks are reducing, and being honest they are with groundings become a rare event and worthy of national news, but happen they do.

But does Modern Technology give people a false sense of security?

Well I have to say yes, the first photograph on this article shows a ship navigating the Islands via the Goldstone Channel and on a spring low tide! Sure with GPS you don't need to follow the instructions of altering course by 10 degrees when the white edge of Waren Mill lines up with second chimney of Waren Mill House but why risk it? Adventure?

And of course we have the skipper of MV Danio who used auto-pilot and set a direct course, directly over the Islands.

Relating this back to your and my day jobs, the tech is there to help but you do need, well I believe that you need, to be able to review the results with a competent eye and check that they 'look right'. Certainly for those who want to commercially operate boats there is a whole lot of time spent on navigation using charts, tidal stream atlases and met office shipping forecast details!