Spilling Oil: It's Not a Slick Business Move

We dove into the chaos of the Torrey Canyon oil spill, one of the first major environmental disasters of its kind, and let’s just say, it was an absolute mess. Back in 1967, the SS Torrey Canyon, a huge oil tanker, hit Pollard’s Rock in the Seven Stones Reef and dumped over 31 million gallons of crude oil into the sea.

Cornwall, the Channel Islands, and parts of Brittany took the brunt of it. Coastlines were wrecked, wildlife devastated, and thousands of seabirds lost. It was a wake-up call for the shipping world and sparked a serious rethink of how we navigate, regulate tankers, and respond to spills.

The whole disaster led to big changes, including the birth of MARPOL (fancy name, important job), which now sets the global standard for preventing pollution from ships.

So yes, we got a bit nerdy with the history, but it’s the kind of story that shows how one disaster can shape the rules we live by today. Stick the kettle on and join us for a deep dive, minus the crude oil.

About Simon and Danielle:

Simon and Danielle are both business owners, based in the East Midlands, who met through mutual business contacts and who share a love of all things business. 

Simon runs Skylight Media – Award-winning experts in Website Design, E-commerce & Marketing running since 2003.

Danielle runs Goldspun Support – a multi-faceted support service for fractional directors and small business owners across the globe, running since 2009.

Since they first met Simon and Danielle have spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about the subjects that interest them – usually over a drink in the pub – and they decided that now was the time to bring these conversations to a wider audience and invite them to join the chat. 

Both Simon and Danielle are successful business owners in their own rights with big plans for the future but will never lose their love of talking all things business… and the pub.

Transcript

Danielle: Hello! Hi!
Simon: Hello.
Danielle: What are you talking about?
Simon: How cold my fingers are.
Danielle: Not a very good podcast topic.
Simon: No, it’s not. But this one’s a short one, right?

Danielle: Okay, I know you're old.
Simon: Yep, I am old. But you also know I’ve got a bit of a relationship with the sea.
Danielle: You sound like an ex-mermaid.
Simon: Fairly close, actually.
Danielle: Right, yes. I know you used to be in the Navy.
Simon: Yep. But even before that, I grew up going on holiday to the tip of North Wales, near Aberdaron. I remember being about seven or eight, sitting on the beach and suddenly realising I had oil on my leg or on my beach towel. It was just, “Ah! Don’t sit there, there’s oil on the beach.”

Danielle: One of those birds, wasn’t it? Covered in oil?
Simon: Yeah, there were loads of them. Big sticky blobs of oil with a crust on top. It was everywhere.

Danielle: That’s grim.
Simon: Yeah. And this story is about the very first major oil spill from a tanker. Pretty much the first of its kind. Even in the 70s and 80s, you could still find oil from that same spill all the way up the coast of England and even in parts of France.

Danielle: So 90% of major spills happen at sea, right?
Simon: Exactly. Oil is being transported from one place to another, and if something goes wrong, it’s usually at sea.

Danielle: So what’s the story here?
Simon: It’s about denial. A looming catastrophe. It’s kind of a metaphor for business too, when you see a problem coming but convince yourself it’ll be fine. You might scrape through. This isn’t really a corporate scandal, but it’s definitely a case of business and the environment clashing with devastating consequences. All triggered by one person, really.

Danielle: Tunnel vision.
Simon: Yep. Or continuation bias. Cognitive dissonance. All of that.

Danielle: Go on then.
Simon: The ship was called the SS Torrey Canyon.
Danielle: Like, canyon as in giant hole in the ground?
Simon: Yes, it was named after an actual canyon in California.

Danielle: Love it.
Simon: It was one of the biggest supertankers of its time. Owned by the Barracuda Tanker Corporation. The ship ran aground on Pollard’s Rock, part of the Seven Stones Reef between the Cornish coast and the Isles of Scilly.

Danielle: Wait, are there seven rocks in the Seven Stones?
Simon: Yep, exactly that.

Danielle: Right. Carry on.
Simon: The captain was called Pastrengo Rugiati. Competent, experienced. He’d been a shipmaster since 1956 and had over 12 years' experience on large tankers.

Danielle: The one with the biggest hat.
Simon: Exactly. His job was to get the ship from point A to point B without losing lives or landing on any rocks. The Torrey Canyon was a Suezmax class oil tanker with a capacity of over 120,000 long tons. That’s roughly 860,000 barrels of crude oil.

Danielle: Wow.
Simon: It wasn’t completely full but was still carrying over 100,000 tons of oil. She was travelling from Kuwait to Milford Haven in South Wales. Too big to go through the Suez Canal, so she had to go the long way round past the Cape of Good Hope and up past the Canary Islands.

Danielle: Long journey.
Simon: The skipper was told he needed to be at Milford Haven by high tide, around 11 pm on March 18th. His own estimate had them arriving by 5 pm that day, cutting it really close. If he missed that window, he could have had to wait almost a week for the next tide high enough to dock.

Danielle: So pressure was on.
Simon: Exactly. He decided to take a shortcut between the Isles of Scilly and the Cornish mainland. Not ideal.

Danielle: Disaster incoming.
Simon: The ship was 974 feet long and 125 feet wide. Massive. Imagine trying to turn something that size quickly. It doesn’t happen. At full speed, it was probably going about 15 to 18 knots, which is roughly 20 mph. Sounds slow but with that weight, it's a lot of momentum.

Danielle: Okay. So what went wrong?
Simon: The autopilot had been set to steer five miles west of the Isles of Scilly. By the next morning, instead of the Isles being on the right, they were on the left. The ship had drifted due to strong Atlantic currents.

Danielle: Oh no.
Simon: The chief officer had noticed the drift and adjusted the course slightly overnight from 18 degrees to 12. But when the captain came back, he changed it back to 18 degrees, putting them straight on course for the reef.

Danielle: Yikes.
Simon: He planned to go through a narrow channel between the Isles and the reef, but there were fishing boats in the way. That delayed the turn. He adjusted slightly again, switched autopilot on and off, but by then, they were already in the danger zone.

Danielle: Surely they could have turned?
Simon: He ordered a hard swing to port but the ship didn’t respond. Turns out the autopilot was still on. They were fighting against it without realising.

Danielle: Oh no.
Simon: By the time they got full control, it was too late. The ship struck Pollard’s Rock. Six of the 18 tanks were ruptured. Over 31 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the sea.

Danielle: That’s awful.
Simon: It spread across the English Channel, coating beaches, killing thousands of seabirds, marine animals and fish. And cleanup efforts made it worse. They used 10,000 tons of toxic dispersants that harmed the environment further.

Danielle: So they bombed it?
Simon: Yes. The Royal Navy and Air Force tried to bomb the wreck to burn off the remaining oil. It was Harold Wilson’s government at the time. They had no idea if it would work. But it did burn. Eventually.

Danielle: I remember the pictures of the birds.
Simon: Yeah. Heartbreaking. Birds being scrubbed with washing-up liquid. It went on for months. It raised global awareness of how unprepared we were for this kind of disaster.

Danielle: Classic case of “we’ll deal with it if it happens.”
Simon: Exactly. The disaster led to huge changes. Stricter regulations, better ship designs and international conventions like MARPOL to prevent pollution from ships.

Danielle: So what actually caused it?
Simon: Human error. Navigation mistakes. Poor decision-making. The captain took a known dangerous shortcut. He misjudged the ship’s position, didn’t account for the current, over-relied on autopilot, failed to communicate properly with the crew and didn’t adjust course when he should have.

Danielle: Sounds like tunnel vision.
Simon: It’s called continuation bias, or “get-there-itis.” When people are so focused on the goal that they ignore all the signs. It’s something pilots and captains are particularly prone to. And it’s worse when no one can question the person in charge.

Danielle: Did the captain say anything after?
Simon: When asked why he didn’t change course, he said, “It was never in my mind.” That was his answer. His master’s license was revoked. The crew survived. They were airlifted off before the bombing.

Danielle: So, lessons learned?
Simon: Yep. Improved ship design with double-skinned hulls, better training, safer navigation practices. Ironically, now sometimes the best solution during oil spills is to let nature take its course, because the chemicals we use can make things worse.

Danielle: That makes sense. The sea can heal itself if we don’t interfere too much.
Simon: Exactly. Those same coastlines are pristine again now. It’s hard to believe what they went through.

Danielle: And this was just the first?
Simon: Yep. The first major one. Since then, there’ve been over 200 major spills. But thankfully, spills are far less common now, even though we ship more oil.

Danielle: Better systems, better tech.
Simon: Exactly. The Torrey Canyon was the wake-up call. A crisis that forced the world to rethink safety, regulation and environmental responsibility.

Danielle: Still can’t believe it didn’t explode.
Simon: Crude oil isn’t as volatile as petrol. But yeah, scary stuff. Oh, and by the way, they’re developing crewless ships now. Like ghost tankers.

Danielle: Ugh. That gives me the ick.
Simon: Yep. Nothing to pirate except a million barrels of oil.

Danielle: You got me excited with “a crude story.” I was expecting something a bit more cheeky.
Simon: Your mind works very differently.
Danielle: It really does.
Simon: Thank you for your attention.