"The vessel Baltic Star, registered in Panama, ran aground at full speed
on the shore of an island in the Stockholm waters on account of thick fog. One
of the boilers had broken down, the steering system reacted only slowly, the
compass was maladjusted, the captain had gone down into the ship to telephone,
the outlook man on the prow took a coffee break and the pilot had given an
erroneous order in English to the sailor who was tending the rudder. The latter
was hard of hearing and understood only Greek."
Extract from the protocol of a Swedish maritime tribunal,
reprinted in Le Monde, November 15, 1979 and
translated into English.
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