Monday, January 22, 2007

The Ultimate in five finger discounts


It's like the goods just fell at their feet. Residents along the English seaside town of Devon are scrambling down to the beach, collecting up their "souvenirs" of one of the largest ship groundings in recent British history.

The container ship MCS Napoli, was purposely grounded along the beach in England when it developed structural damage during a huge winter storm last week. The fear was that without grounding the vessel it would break up along the shore and the cargo would be lost.

Instead the majority of the cargo remained on board the listing ship, though a good number were dumped and ended up floating towards the English shoreline. Littering the area with a wide variety of consumer goods such as wine cases, shoes, hair care products and BMW motorbikes.

Despite warnings that some of the cargo washing ashore could be dangerous cargo, scores of scavengers some carrying young children took to the beaches to provide their own recovery services.

And as if to indicate that it truly is a global world now, a number of the items are finding their way onto eBay, adding another if unsuspected service to the Internet shopping market of salvage reseller.
(Photo above from the BBC Pictures site)

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