We’ve seen Blackpool swamped with chocolate biscuits and Worthing almost buried under mounds of wood, but the the undisputed capital of British beachcombing is the south-west. The Channel is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, the weather down there can get extremely wild and, of course, this is often the first bit of Britain to be reached by the Atlantic current, which then drops much of what it is carrying on the Isles of Scilly, Devon and Cornwall – where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pink plastic bottles washed up at the weekend. Sadly, and contrary to popular belief, there is no loophole that makes you the legal owner of anything you find washed up on a beach. You may get a reward if you correctly report your finding to Alison Kentuck, the receiver of wreck. If the owner does not claim it within 12 months, you may even get to keep it. Otherwise, in the eyes of the law, taking wreckage is simply stealing. Even so, the thrill of finding some things should be enough to encourage a lot more walks by the seaside.
The latest shipment to end up decorating the Cornish coast began washing up all over the Lizard peninsula on Sunday. At the time of writing, it isn’t clear exactly where they came from, or what they are. Most of the bottles, thankfully, remain sealed, but a few seem to have leaked something detergent-like. From the look of the bottles, the smart money is on fabric softener. On 13 February 1997, the Tokio Express container ship, en route from Rotterdam to New York, was struck by a freak wave about 20 miles south of Land’s End. The ship tilted so violently that 62 containers – each the size of a lorry – spilled overboard. One of them held 4.8m pieces of Lego, much of it nautical-themed. Ever since, people in Cornwall and Devon, and even Brighton and Wales, have been finding little plastic octopuses, dragons, rafts, spear guns and diver flippers on the sand. “Perranporth is a hotspot for brooms,” beachcomber Tracey Williams told the BBC. “The Lizard seems to be a hotspot for octopuses.”
Perhaps the most exciting recent discovery was a fragment of disposable fairing from a SpaceX rocket, which was spotted floating between Bryher and Tresco in the Isles of Scilly. (A fairing is a protective outer layer designed to fall away once the rocket reaches space.) The white-painted aluminium honeycomb and carbon fibre sheet was covered in goose barnacles, and later identified as part of an unmanned launch in September 2014, which had carried scientific instruments and supplies up to the International Space Station. Probably the most valuable recent spill, and certainly the most problematic to find. In February 2008, a series of taped-up packages of pure cocaine began appearing – first in Bude, then on the Lizard peninsula, then on Rosevine beach, then more floating just off the Lizard, then more on Pentreath beach, then still more in Wales. The packages, actually marked “Colombia”, varied in size, but all were generous. Frank Partridge, a parish clerk, pulled 25kg off Pentreath beach and wheelbarrowed it home.
The first two hauls, in Bude and the Lizard, contained 52kg between them. Once diluted and distributed, the combined shipments, which were presumed dumped by smugglers in the Caribbean, would have fetched more than £7m. And who knows whether any other packages were found, but not reported … Sometimes it does happen. Last August, Francesca McCarthy was looking at the rocks on the beach by the Karma St Martin’s hotel, which she runs, when she found a bottle. Inside was a note written on lined paper from a jotting pad, in more or less perfect condition. It had been written by a couple from South Carolina, Catherine and William Tallman, and they had dropped it into the sea while on holiday in the Bahamas in May 2014. “The note said they were on their second honeymoon,” McCarthy told ITV News, “and they were really enjoying their holiday, and if this message was ever found we should ring this number, and that’s exactly what we did.” The Tallmans had dropped about 10 bottles over the years, it turned out, before one was finally found.
During a storm in the Bay of Biscay on Valentine’s Day in 2014, the Danish ship Svendborg Maersk, bound for Sri Lanka from Rotterdam, tipped violently on its side, shedding 512 containers into the sea. Most sank or washed up in France, but a number of others began floating north. The first reached Seaton beach in Devon on 23 February, and turned out to contain about a million cigarettes, the Lark brand among others, most still in their packets. The next day another load, including Marlboro and Philip Morris, washed up on Chesil beach in Dorset. The cigarettes were all burned, but not in the way originally intended. “Beachcombing” doesn’t quite do justice to what happened for a couple of days at the end of January 2007 on Branscombe beach in Devon. “Frenzy” might be better. On 18 January, the British container ship MSC Napoli began taking on water in the Channel. The crew abandoned ship, an official salvage operation failed and soon afterwards the ship had to be deliberately run aground, as a result of which 103 containers spilled on to the shore.
There had been warnings of hazardous materials, but those who came to “salvage” drove off with carpets, beauty creams, golf clubs, camcorders, pet food, barrels of wine, car parts, oil paintings and – most prized of all – a container full of brand-new BMW motorbikes, worth £12,000 each. Many people eventually did the decent thing and reported their items. In the end, BMW told the finders they could keep their bikes. It was a mystery that puzzled beachcombers for many years. Why were large, rubbery tablets with “Tjipetir” written on them washing up on beaches all over northern Europe, and especially in Cornwall and Brittany? The answer, according to Alison Kentuck (the receiver of wreck), and in the opinion of Tracey Williams (of Lego fame), appears to be a century old. When the Japanese liner Miyazaki Maru was sunk by a German submarine in 1917, 150 miles west of Scilly, it was carrying large quantities of gutta-percha, a rubber-like substance then used to protect underwater cables, which had been farmed in Tjipetir, West Java, Indonesia.