The Torrey Canyon Disaster - A Warning From History - A Quartet
Animal Rights Poetry By Heidi Stephenson From All-Creatures.org

"...And now the Wakashio Ecocide, and the terrible, personal cost to so many birds, animals and marine beings in Mauritius - when will we ever learn?"

Mauritius oil spill: environmental crisis unfolds
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“Black specks were coming in across the waves, some thrashing the water like torpedoes, others drifting in with the rising tide. They were the first Torrey Canyon birds I saw, desperately beating their way to safety before the advancing oil …You could see them flopping and struggling in a host of places around our shores, trying to walk and extricate themselves from the coagulation of oil and sand, their plumage plastered with it, helpless, silent, bewildered, innocent.”
~ Dorothy Yglesias, co-founder of the Mousehole Bird Hospital and Sanctuary, in In Answer to the Cry

“There is a poor guillemot down there, beneath that granite boulder, on the blackened sand; and as the filthy tide comes in and starts to wash its dead, unfeeling body to and fro, it brings the pathos of our own sin and shame more closely home to us.”
~ Dororthy Yglesias in In Answer to the Cry

March 14th, 1967 –
the spring
of the summer
of LOVE.

The “supertanker”
SS Torrey Canyon,
owned by
the Barracuda
Tanker Corporation,
(chartered by BP)
strikes
Pollard’s Rock
on Seven Stones Reef -
between Cornwall
and the Isles
of Scilly.

She spills
thirty-six
million
gallons
of crude oil
hot from
the Persian Gulf,
into pristine
waters:
the UK’s
worst spill,
in living
history.

An avoidable,
navigation “error,”
a “confusion”
between “master”
and “helmsman;”
a desire
to save
half an hour.
(The problem
not rectified
in time.)

The ship
on automatic steering
hurtles
at full speed
(at seventeen knots)
in broad day light.

The same date
of approach
when large numbers
of sea birds
come up
from the South
along old,
migration
routes.

Warning rockets
are fired
from the lightship.
But the captain
orders
“Full steam
astern!”

There is a loud
grinding
along the length
of her 1000ft keel
then the first
stream
of Torrey Canyon’s
120,000 tons
of oil
pour out
into
the sea.

The Satanic Ark
belches
her bile-black
venom
and begins
to break up.

Detergent
is deployed
on an unprecedented
scale.

The British cabinet
instructs
Culdrose
to set fire
to the doom
vessel.

Forty-two
1000lb bombs
are dropped
from sky.

After two days
of war,
with the high tides,
the high seas,
she finally
sinks.

15,000
sea birds die.
Unaccountable,
(“huge numbers”) more,
are never found.

Millions
of marine beings
perish –
because of
the TOXICITY
made worse
by the “solvent
-emulsifiers.”
(10,000 tons
of chemical
poison
float
on top of
the deathly
oil.)

120 miles
of Cornish coast
lies contaminated.
(A further
50 miles,
off Brittany.)

The British government
is “strongly criticized”
for its man-handling
of the unfortunate,
international
“incident.”

David Bellamy,
(man of plants)
steps forward,
cries out,
publishes
a report
on this
PLANETARY
disaster.

And Mousehole
opens
its doors.

 

Black Death

A black death
of oil
was cast
upon the sea.

The ship
needed
to be saved!

(The captain
not yet ready
to abandon.)

A merciless,
man-made mess
was pumped.

The gale roared.
The surf boiled.
The waves swept
desperately.

A black tide.
A black Friday.

Overwhelming
the helpless.

 

Operation Bird Wash

Offers of help
came flooding in.
Mousehole rallied.
School boys collected
rags, towels, sponges,
boxes, straw, sheets.
Washing stations
were set up
all over the village.

The Penzance Playgoers
took consignments of birds
to clean and dry.
A nearby garage
was commandeered.
Recuperation homes
were found
in Slimbridge,
Bristol, Taunton.

Letters arrived
with prayers,
thanks,
donations.
From America, Canada,
South Africa, Australia.
We had never seen
so much money
in all our lives.
Someone sent a box -
of golden daffodils.

Many said our efforts
were wasted;
that the birds
should all
have been “destroyed”
on the beaches.

Others understood.
Compassion
committed them
to preserving
fellow lives,
to trying
to make
some sort
of amends.

Eight thousand victims
passed through
our doors
in that one,
manic month.

 

Aftermath

Thin and weak,
their feet and beaks
badly blistered -
having swum
the gauntlet
of the oil,
only to be met
by the detergents
sprayed
on all the beaches.

Without warning
they would go
into convulsions,
screaming out
their agony.
Brain-damaged,
lungs
broken.

There could be
only one answer
to that.

We helped them over
as humanely as we could -
using an injection.
Death
was quick.

In the mornings,
we always found
a number had died
during the night.
We put their limp bodies
into sacks.

Our most haunting
memories
were when these sacks
were dragged
down the hospital steps:
too heavy
to be carried.

All that suffering;
all that dreadful
bumping.

©Heidi Stephenson, August 2020

Image Getty Images

British Pathé

Oiled Pelican

Oiled dead Bird