A Stranding in the West Indies

Extract

In January 1971 the liner Antilles sailing among the islands of the same name ran aground in the neighbourhood of the Grenadines, between the islands of Mustique and the Pillories. Nobody was injured but the ship was lost. An inquiry by a maritime court in the following October acquitted the Captain and this came as a great relief to the seafaring fraternity because it was difficult to see how a sailor at the top of his profession could knowingly have navigated with such imprudence. The fatal rock was not shown on the chart and everyone knows that charts are not perfect: the Master had been the victim of the inevitable.