Speaker 1: Pushkin. This thing still on. Michael Lewis here. Guess what.
Speaker 1: I'm working on a second season of Against the Rules.
Speaker 1: I had so much fun doing season one that I
Speaker 1: decided to keep going. I'm back in the field with
Speaker 1: my producers, talking to people and poking around. The next
Speaker 1: season is going to be about coaches and why the
Speaker 1: role of coach has expanded so far beyond sports in
Speaker 1: American life. If everybody hates the ref, everyone seems to
Speaker 1: love the coach these days. In season two, I'm going
Speaker 1: to explore why it's out next spring. Meanwhile, I have
Speaker 1: something else for you to listen to. It's a new
Speaker 1: show from Pushkin Industries by a British writer I really admire.
Speaker 1: His name is Tim Harford. He's a familiar voice on
Speaker 1: the BBC. Whereas most recent series was about the modern
Speaker 1: inventions we might not have noticed but would shape our lives,
Speaker 1: this new show from Tim is called Cautionary Tales, and
Speaker 1: it's full of spectacular stories about other people's mistakes, my
Speaker 1: favorite kind of mistakes. Tim and his team of actors
Speaker 1: re enact airship disasters and great frauds and safety systems
Speaker 1: gone awry, and then he tells us what we can
Speaker 1: learn from it all. We've got one of the first
Speaker 1: episodes right here. This one is an unbelievable story about
Speaker 1: an enormous tanker about to crash into the coast of England.
Speaker 1: Give it a listen, then go subscribe to Cautionary Tales
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your podcasts to hear more from Tim.
Speaker 1: And I promise I'll be back in this feed before
Speaker 1: you know it. Here's Tim Harford. I opened the wrapping
Speaker 1: paper hurriedly with nervous hands, excited to get at the
Speaker 1: gift inside. Little did I know, disaster was about to
Speaker 1: enter my previously happy childhood. It wasn't a disaster visited
Speaker 1: on mean or my family. It was a catalog of
Speaker 1: disasters for everyone else. For the gift was a book,
Speaker 1: and it was titled, in bold letters on a blood
Speaker 1: red background, the World's Greatest Mistakes. The stories were set
Speaker 1: out like a trashy and exciting tabloid newspaper. Some were absurd,
Speaker 1: like the bride who accidentally married the best man. Some
Speaker 1: of them were famous tragedies, the Titanic slipping beneath the
Speaker 1: icy sea, funny or sad. All of them fascinated me,
Speaker 1: and I realized something that has guided me throughout my life.
Speaker 1: Learning from other people's mistakes is a lot less painful
Speaker 1: than learning from your own. My name is Tim Harford.
Speaker 1: Some people call me the undercover Economist. I use scientific
Speaker 1: ideas to help people think more clearly about the world
Speaker 1: in my books, my ted Talks, my BBC shows, and
Speaker 1: my column for the Financial Times. That may sound all
Speaker 1: very grown up, but part of me is that little
Speaker 1: boy who loved stories of catastrophe, mistake and mayhem. So
Speaker 1: I still seek out and collect such stories, but now
Speaker 1: I probe the details. I challenge the orthodox view and
Speaker 1: look for the root causes and ponder how disaster could
Speaker 1: have been prevented. In short, I look for the painless
Speaker 1: lessons they can teach me. And now I want to
Speaker 1: share some of these cautionary tales with you too. Each
Speaker 1: story has a moral, each story is true, and each story,
Speaker 1: if you're not careful, could happen to you. So gather
Speaker 1: closer and I'll begin. We pray thee Lord, not that
Speaker 1: rex should happen, but that if any Rex do happen,
Speaker 1: thou wilt guide them to the silly isles for the
Speaker 1: benefit of the poor. Inhabitants. That's an old prayer from
Speaker 1: the Isles of Scilly. The isles are just off the
Speaker 1: coast of Cornwall, the southwest tip of Great Britain, and
Speaker 1: that prayer has been answered many times. The rocks around
Speaker 1: the islands have a fearsome reputation and it's well earned.
Speaker 1: One autumn night in seventeen oh seven, the Royal Navy
Speaker 1: lost its way in a storm. The flagship HMS Association
Speaker 1: struck a rock and went down in minutes. Eight hundred
Speaker 1: men drowned behind it. HMS Saint George hit the rocks
Speaker 1: and became stuck. So did HMS Phoenix, did HS Firebrow.
Speaker 1: HMS Romney lost her entire crew. HMS Eagle was shattered
Speaker 1: on the cruel stone. Hundreds more sailors died. That dreadful
Speaker 1: night was one of the worst disasters in the history
Speaker 1: of the British Navy. Local legend has it that there
Speaker 1: was one notable survivor, that the Commander in Chief of
Speaker 1: the British Fleets, Sir Cloudsley Shovel, was washed up on
Speaker 1: the beaches of the Aisles of Scilly, but was strangled
Speaker 1: by a local woman who fancied wearing his Emerald ring
Speaker 1: herself if she had been praying the old prayer God
Speaker 1: or the devil had been listening. It is a dark tale,
Speaker 1: but the story I shall tell you today is a
Speaker 1: far stranger one. It was some time after dawn on
Speaker 1: Saturday March the eighteenth, nineteen sixty seven. Martyr Christie was
Speaker 1: a langoustier, a French lobster boat, fishing for crayfish and
Speaker 1: crab between the mainland and the Isles of Scilly. Twenty
Speaker 1: one miles further west on deck was Captain Gui Folich,
Speaker 1: another langoustier, was near by, both of them enjoying rich pickings.
Speaker 1: A few hundred yards north of the Seven Stones. The
Speaker 1: Seven Stones make up a vicious reef about one third
Speaker 1: of the way between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland.
Speaker 1: At low tide, the unyielding rocks are visible, but even
Speaker 1: at high tide there marked by a lighthouse vessel warning
Speaker 1: ships to stay away. Gui Folich looked up from his
Speaker 1: lobster lions to see an unexpected sight, a vast black
Speaker 1: hull coming over the horizon from an unusual direction. He
Speaker 1: was surprised. A major vessel in that position would usually
Speaker 1: have passed outside of the aisles of Scilly rather than
Speaker 1: squeezing between them and the mainland. True, a big ship
Speaker 1: could come between the aisles of Scilly and the mainland,
Speaker 1: passing on either side of the seven Stones, but it
Speaker 1: would be a little on the tight side. And this ship,
Speaker 1: a supertanker, was very big. Indeed, in fact, it was
Speaker 1: the thirteenth biggest ship in the world. On the lighthouse vessel,
Speaker 1: the two seamen on watch saw the tanker approaching too.
Speaker 1: Have you seen this? Have you? Yeah? Look at that
Speaker 1: big bastro coming up. Gifolich could see the huge ship
Speaker 1: coming straight towards him as he fished kayak, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't worried. In between him and the oncoming juggernaut were
Speaker 1: the seven Stones. He later said, I was sure that
Speaker 1: before ever eating us, you would go on to the rugs.
Speaker 1: He yelled to his men, stop work, you're going to
Speaker 1: see something extraordinary. All seven of them lined up on
Speaker 1: the rail of Marta Christie to watch the oil tanker
Speaker 1: bear closer and closer, four miles, three miles. Folich was
Speaker 1: sure it was doomed. It just wasn't possible to turn
Speaker 1: a supertanker that quickly. Was it? Actually? Folich wasn't quite right.
Speaker 1: The tanker, whose name was Torry Canyon did still have
Speaker 1: room to turn. This wasn't a storm tossed fleet of
Speaker 1: sailing ships fumbling through the darkness. The weather was good,
Speaker 1: the visibility was good. Torry Canyon was a superb ship,
Speaker 1: in fine working order and armed with radar. The seven
Speaker 1: Stones were clearly marked on every chart, as well as
Speaker 1: being identified by the position of the lighthouse vessel. But
Speaker 1: Tory Canyon still wasn't turning. Gather close and listen to
Speaker 1: my cautionary tail. Nobody knew it at the time, but
Speaker 1: the trouble all started with a radio message from milford Haven,
Speaker 1: the harbor towards which Torry Canyon was sailing. Milford Haven
Speaker 1: is a major UK port, and the thing you need
Speaker 1: to know about ports in the UK is that the
Speaker 1: difference between high tide and low tide can be enormous.
Speaker 1: What's more, there are high tides and high tides, some
Speaker 1: are higher than others. The message from Milford Haven was
Speaker 1: simple enough. Torry Canyon needed to hurry. If the ship
Speaker 1: didn't arrive by eleven pm on Saturday evening, March the eighteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, it would miss the extra high tide
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to slip into the harbor and dock.
Speaker 1: It would then have to wait another six days before
Speaker 1: the tide would once more be high enough. Missing the
Speaker 1: eleven pm deadline would mean a very expensive delay. That
Speaker 1: news put Captain Pastrengo Rugiati under pressure. He had no
Speaker 1: more than one or two hours margin, not a lot,
Speaker 1: but Rujiahti had coped with worse. He'd been a navigator
Speaker 1: on an Italian submarine during the war, had survived a
Speaker 1: German prison camp, and had been commanding oil tankers for
Speaker 1: twenty years. Captain Rujati was in many ways a genial fellow,
Speaker 1: chatty and hospitable. He liked to eat good food, but
Speaker 1: insisted he shouldn't be served anything that wasn't available to
Speaker 1: his crew. As a result, the men on Torry Canyon
Speaker 1: ate very well. But Rujiahti was also a detailsman who
Speaker 1: kept a close eye on his officers. Rugiasty was extremely conscientious.
Speaker 1: He was a man who wanted to know absolute, loutely everything.
Speaker 1: Perhaps because of that, Ruggiati stayed up late on the
Speaker 1: Friday night before landfall preparing the paperwork for when they docked.
Speaker 1: It was only at half past three in the morning
Speaker 1: that he went to bed, leaving instructions that he was
Speaker 1: to be awakened first thing when the Aisles of Silly
Speaker 1: were sighted. It was half past six in the morning
Speaker 1: when the Aisles of Scilly appeared on the radar, about
Speaker 1: thirty five miles away. First Officer Silvano Bonfilio was on duty,
Speaker 1: and the position of the ship relative to the Isles
Speaker 1: of Scilly was an unpleasant surprise. Torry Canyon, plowing through
Speaker 1: the night across the ocean had been pushed off its
Speaker 1: intended course by the current and the winds. It was
Speaker 1: now headed between the islands and the mainland. Bonfilio immediately
Speaker 1: changed course, steering away from the channel, figuring that Captain
Speaker 1: Rugiati had intended to pass outside of the islands, but
Speaker 1: he hedged his beds. Rather than out to sea or
Speaker 1: closer to the mainland, he was bearing straight towards the
Speaker 1: Isles of Scilly. He then woke up Captain Ruggiati. Rugiati
Speaker 1: was angry. Was it because Bonfilio had changed course without checking,
Speaker 1: Was it because the new course was neither one thing
Speaker 1: nor another? Or was he just sleep deprived will our
Speaker 1: original heaving of eighteen degrees be free of the Sillies? Yes,
Speaker 1: then continue on course eighteen degrees. I intend to pass
Speaker 1: to the starboard of the Silly Isles. When Filio was
Speaker 1: so surprised he had to check that it understood the order,
Speaker 1: which irritated Ruggiati. Still further Still, a maneuver shouldn't be
Speaker 1: too perilous. It was perfectly possible to get even a
Speaker 1: large ship through. The standard manual for navigating the waters
Speaker 1: around the coast of the British Isles is called the
Speaker 1: Channel Pilot. If Captain Ruggiati had consulted a copy, here's
Speaker 1: what it would have said. The actual width of the
Speaker 1: channel between the nearest of the Silly Islands and Land's
Speaker 1: End is twenty one miles, but as the route taken
Speaker 1: by all large vessels should be eastward of seven stones
Speaker 1: light vessel, the navigable channel can only be considered as
Speaker 1: twelve miles wide. The lights render the passage perfectly simple
Speaker 1: at night as well as by day in ordinarily clear weather.
Speaker 1: But as there is no part of the coast of
Speaker 1: England more subject to sudden changes of weather, the greatest
Speaker 1: vigilance is necessary and a vessel's position, even in the
Speaker 1: clearest weather, should be checked by cross bearings at short intervals.
Speaker 1: But Captain Rugiati Alas did not have a copy of
Speaker 1: the channel pilot on board, and so he missed two
Speaker 1: important pieces of wisdom. First, if you want to go
Speaker 1: between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland, be careful. Second,
Speaker 1: pass between the mainland and the seven Stones. There is
Speaker 1: an alternative route between the seven Stones and the Aisles
Speaker 1: of Silly themselves, but the channel pilot doesn't mention it
Speaker 1: because it's narrower, six and a half miles wide rather
Speaker 1: than twelve. Why take the narrower channel when you could
Speaker 1: take the broader one. Of course, you could still fit
Speaker 1: an oil tanker through the narrower gap, even an oil
Speaker 1: tanker that's nearly as big as the Chrysler building, but
Speaker 1: you'd be cutting it close. You'd be better and nothing
Speaker 1: went wrong. Inertia is a powerful thing. That's true for
Speaker 1: an oil tanker the size of Torry Canyon, which needed
Speaker 1: nearly five minutes to make a ninety degree turn, during
Speaker 1: which time it would travel a mile and a half
Speaker 1: at cruising speed. But inertia is a powerful thing for humans. Too.
Speaker 1: We also sometimes struggle to change course. Psychologists have identified
Speaker 1: a strong bias towards the status quo. For example, whether
Speaker 1: we sign up for a workplace pension plan or not
Speaker 1: seems to depend on whatever the status quo is. If
Speaker 1: the default option is to sign up, we sign up.
Speaker 1: If the default is to stay out, we stay out.
Speaker 1: As I say, inertia is powerful. Psychologists who study accidents
Speaker 1: have a name for a particular form of inertia. They
Speaker 1: call it plan continuation bias. It's best known in aviation.
Speaker 1: Pilots form a plan and then are reluctant to change it,
Speaker 1: even if the circumstances suggest they should. The pilots themselves
Speaker 1: have another name for it, get their itis. The classic
Speaker 1: form of get their itis is an approach to an
Speaker 1: airfield with a storm coming in. If you and well
Speaker 1: before the storm arrives, no problem. If the storm arrives
Speaker 1: before you land, that's not a crisis either. It's a hassle.
Speaker 1: You have to divert to another airfield, with all the delay,
Speaker 1: expense and annoyance that implies. But you do it because
Speaker 1: you don't want to fly into a dangerous storm. The
Speaker 1: risk comes, and the storm is closing in, but there's
Speaker 1: still a window of opportunity to land. The landing strip
Speaker 1: is so close, just minutes away. Tunnel vision sets in,
Speaker 1: people start to hurry, Margins for error are stripped away.
Speaker 1: Usually there's no harm done. The pilot lands just as
Speaker 1: the storm rips across, and congratulates himself or herself for
Speaker 1: keeping cool and showing skill under pressure. But sometimes the
Speaker 1: consequences are more serious. One study of get their Itis
Speaker 1: looked at twenty occasions when thunderstorms had closed in at
Speaker 1: Hartsfield Jackson, Atlanta's major international airport. Again and again, pilots
Speaker 1: decided to chant a risky landing, risky in the sense
Speaker 1: that the Federal Aviation Administration's official guidelines would have advised
Speaker 1: against it. One plane after another would land under ever
Speaker 1: more perilous conditions, until eventually one flight crew would resist
Speaker 1: the inertia and decide to divert elsewhere. At that point,
Speaker 1: every subsequent plane would also decide to divert. The madness
Speaker 1: only ended when someone set an example and changed the plan.
Speaker 1: I'm no airline pilots, but I sometimes suffer from get
Speaker 1: their itis in my own life. Perhaps you do too.
Speaker 1: For me, it tends to emerge when dealing with family logistics.
Speaker 1: I've got three children at two different schools, and they
Speaker 1: all have their hobbies and sports and all usual things.
Speaker 1: I'm sure many parents will be familiar with the play
Speaker 1: spinning that this sometimes involves. But then something goes wrong.
Speaker 1: The cars in the shop to be repaired, No problem,
Speaker 1: we can bike instead. Then someone needs to be at
Speaker 1: home to meet the plumber. We make contingency plans and
Speaker 1: they seem like they'll be fine, but then a fresh
Speaker 1: errand appears, or a babysitter calls to cancel. As complications mount,
Speaker 1: the plan starts to resemble an increasingly precarious assembly of
Speaker 1: stages and steps, lift, swaps and rendezvous. It's a Rube
Speaker 1: Goldberg fever dream of an itinerary. And then, if I'm lucky,
Speaker 1: either I or my wife will find enough headspace to
Speaker 1: say this is crazy. Someone's going to have to skip
Speaker 1: dance class tonight. We'll call the plumber to see if
Speaker 1: tomorrow's okay. Instead, we'll replace the entire time and motion
Speaker 1: nightmare with something radically simpler. But that's hard to do
Speaker 1: because of the inertia, because of the plan continuation by us,
Speaker 1: and the more the pressure mounts, the harder it is
Speaker 1: to see clearly just how precarious everything has become. I
Speaker 1: become so fixated on executing the plan that I don't
Speaker 1: have a moment to realize that it's now a stupid plan.
Speaker 1: Captain Rugiati was under pressure to reach the harbor at
Speaker 1: Milford Haven in time, and had been woken with the
Speaker 1: unwelcome news that the ship was off course too far
Speaker 1: towards the mainland. If he'd stopped to think or to
Speaker 1: talk to his officers, he would have realized that he
Speaker 1: still had time to turn and go the long way
Speaker 1: round outside the Aisles of Scilly. He only had an
Speaker 1: hour or two to spare, but a brief calculation would
Speaker 1: have revealed that the detour would have cost just twenty
Speaker 1: nine minutes. Yet he didn't pause to reflect. He snapped
Speaker 1: at Bonfilio and ordered him to stick to the course
Speaker 1: that would now cut inside the Isles of Scilly. Nor
Speaker 1: did he reflect that, since his ship had already been
Speaker 1: deflected by the current and the wind, those forces might
Speaker 1: well continue to work upon the ship, moving it out
Speaker 1: of its intended position. Under time pressure, he began to
Speaker 1: suffer get their itis. His plan was risky, and his
Speaker 1: plan was not about to change. At eight eighteen am,
Speaker 1: a junior officer calculated their position, this being the days
Speaker 1: before GPS. He did it with the ship's charts, a
Speaker 1: compass bearing, and a radar reading old school, but the
Speaker 1: inexperienced officer was anxious. He wasn't convinced he'd got the
Speaker 1: ship's position exactly right, but he didn't speak up. After all,
Speaker 1: there'd be another chance to take a fix in ten
Speaker 1: minutes or so. Captain Rugiati wasn't speaking up either, as
Speaker 1: the ship steamed north at sixteen knots nearly twenty miles
Speaker 1: an hour. He had already decided which course he would take,
Speaker 1: but he hadn't told his crew, which meant that they
Speaker 1: hadn't had a chance to comment, and they didn't feel
Speaker 1: entitled to ask. Captain Rugatti had actually decided to pass
Speaker 1: through the narrow channel, which involved bending the ship's course
Speaker 1: in a long, slow curve to the left. Why Perhaps
Speaker 1: because it was the most direct route, but mostly because
Speaker 1: well why not? To me? It was, they say, But
Speaker 1: should he not have taken just a few more minutes
Speaker 1: to avoid the narrow route? That was never in my mind.
Speaker 1: That's a revealing turn of phrase. Never, in my mind,
Speaker 1: Pastrenger Rugiati didn't even consider the possibility of going through
Speaker 1: the wider channel. And while that might seem strange to
Speaker 1: you or me, it's a natural feature of planned continuation
Speaker 1: by us. As the tunnel vision develops. We don't even
Speaker 1: think about alternatives to our ishor plan. We don't have
Speaker 1: the bandwidth. We continue to plow on. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, a young boy was rushed into a hospital
Speaker 1: emergency room. He suffered from asthma, and he was in distress.
Speaker 1: He was finding it harder to breathe and harder and harder,
Speaker 1: and then his breathing stopped. The medical team quickly strapped
Speaker 1: an oxygen mask on to the boy. That should have helped,
Speaker 1: but instead his heart stopped beating two. There were eight
Speaker 1: trained medical professionals in the room, taking it in turns
Speaker 1: to perform CPR on the boy. Still no pulse, Still
Speaker 1: no breathing. The minutes ticked by a doctor slid a
Speaker 1: breathing tube down the boy's throat. No thing's happening. Is
Speaker 1: the tube in position? The tube's fine? I checked, Is
Speaker 1: there any pulse? Still nothing? Let's take the breathing tube
Speaker 1: out and try the airbag again. It's not helping. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't helping. And the reason it wasn't helping was
Speaker 1: because the breathing apparatus was broken. It would have taken
Speaker 1: a few seconds to check if any of the five
Speaker 1: nurses or three doctors had thought to check, but they
Speaker 1: didn't think, not until the boy had been deprived of
Speaker 1: oxygen for ten minutes. Thankfully, this wasn't a tragedy. It
Speaker 1: was a training exercise. Instead of a real boy, it
Speaker 1: was a medical dummy that was lying on the bed
Speaker 1: failing to produce a simulated pulse or simulated respiration because
Speaker 1: the medical team didn't step back and think. This training
Speaker 1: scenario was conducted nineteen times, and videos of the exercise
Speaker 1: were studded by Marlist Christiansen, a professor of organizational behavior
Speaker 1: and previously the doctor Professor. Christiansen found that some medical
Speaker 1: teams took just seconds to identify the problem with a
Speaker 1: breathing equipment. This isn't working, it's broken. That's impressive, But
Speaker 1: perhaps more impressive were the teams who started with the
Speaker 1: wrong theory about the problem, but didn't get stuck on
Speaker 1: that idea. They didn't fixate on one possibility, or keep
Speaker 1: repeating the same approach over and over again. They would
Speaker 1: talk through what they were thinking and challenge themselves and
Speaker 1: each other. They could change course, but not every team
Speaker 1: did that. Many teams would hammer away at the same plan,
Speaker 1: regardless of the signs that it wasn't going to work.
Speaker 1: They didn't step back and think, They didn't talk things through,
Speaker 1: They just kept going. Could Captain Rugiati avoid the same fate.
Speaker 1: Captain Rugatti is now trying to curve his ship through
Speaker 1: the narrower channel. He doesn't even have the full six
Speaker 1: and a half miles to aim at because he's approaching
Speaker 1: at an angle. He's left himself precious little margin for error.
Speaker 1: As it is, Torry Canyon is heading straight for the
Speaker 1: submerged rocks at half past eight. As the slow, slow
Speaker 1: turn begins, two fishing boats appear on the radar, the
Speaker 1: two French langoustiers that are watching the oncoming supertanker with astonishment.
Speaker 1: Rugiati had planned to keep turning, but now he has
Speaker 1: to ensure he doesn't hit the boats. Suddenly, floats come
Speaker 1: into view. There are a sign of fishing nets beneath
Speaker 1: the surface. Tory Canyon can't possibly avoid them all and
Speaker 1: slices through one set of nets. Captain Rugiati pauses his
Speaker 1: turn in order not to shred thet He's now heading
Speaker 1: very close to where he thinks the stones are, but
Speaker 1: he still hopes to be able to resume his turn
Speaker 1: after passing the nets. But meanwhile, all the while, the
Speaker 1: current has been gently, insistently pushing Torry Canyon closer and
Speaker 1: closer to the seven Stones. At this point, Rugiati seems
Speaker 1: to have woken up to the danger. He has precious
Speaker 1: little room for maneuver. Rather than curving out of danger,
Speaker 1: he's heading directly towards the seven Stones. He was later
Speaker 1: asked whether he would have been heading that way if
Speaker 1: not for the fishing boats and their nets. No, only
Speaker 1: a madman would have followed. In northern course, Rugiati now
Speaker 1: knows his heading is dangerous. His plan to go through
Speaker 1: the narrow channel is being frustrated, but as the pressure rises,
Speaker 1: he can't step back and form a better plan. Why
Speaker 1: doesn't he slow down? Why doesn't he abandon his plan
Speaker 1: to turn left into the channel and instead turned sharply
Speaker 1: right into deep water. That was never in my mind. Never.
Speaker 1: When get their itis takes hold there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that should be in our minds but aren't.
Speaker 1: At eight thirty eight am, Captain Ruggiati takes a look
Speaker 1: at the charts. His junior officer has just taken another bearing.
Speaker 1: Ruggiati is an old hand. He can see at once
Speaker 1: that it can't be right. The crosses marking the ship's
Speaker 1: position should be at regular intervals, but they're not. One
Speaker 1: of the bearings is wrong. He doesn't know which. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're both wrong. Captain Ruggiati doesn't know where he is.
Speaker 1: The junior officer takes another bearing with the Captain's help.
Speaker 1: The new fix shows that the ship is closer to
Speaker 1: the seven Stones than they're realized, less than three miles. Remember,
Speaker 1: Torry Canyon takes a mile and a half to make
Speaker 1: a ninety degree turn on his trawler. Watching with horror
Speaker 1: guy Foliage has already concluded that it's all over. Torry
Speaker 1: Canyon can't possibly avoid the rocks, but he's wrong. There
Speaker 1: is still time. There's still time to turn into deep water.
Speaker 1: There's even still time to turn into the channel, which
Speaker 1: is what Pastrengo Rugiati has been trying to do for
Speaker 1: the last four miles and so, even though it doesn't
Speaker 1: really make sense anymore, that's what he continues to try
Speaker 1: to do. Helmsman can't do their wheel, Yes, Captain hard
Speaker 1: to part. Go to three fifty, Take her to three,
Speaker 1: take her to three twenty. Rugiati is ordering an ever
Speaker 1: tighter turn into the channel. Captain. Captain, the ship's are
Speaker 1: turning even now there's still time. She's not turning. Captain
Speaker 1: Rugiati needs to think, why isn't the ship turning? Perhaps
Speaker 1: the fuel pumps controlling the rudder have broken. Rajati has
Speaker 1: seen that happen before. He tries to dial the engine room,
Speaker 1: but instead he makes the kind of mistake you make
Speaker 1: when you've had three hours sleep and you only have
Speaker 1: seconds to solve a problem. He calls the officers dining room. Ah, captain,
Speaker 1: are you ready for breakfast? Well? God deal, God is
Speaker 1: a pig. That's some serious blasphemy from a good Italian Catholic.
Speaker 1: It's the blasphemy of a man who knows time has
Speaker 1: just run out. There's a photograph of Pastrenga Rugiati. I
Speaker 1: can't get out of my head. He's scrunched up in
Speaker 1: a confined space, his knees tucked into his chest as
Speaker 1: if to protect himself. His eyes rolled sharply to one side,
Speaker 1: his face ghoulishly lit from below. He's wearing a hospital
Speaker 1: gown and he's hiding under a hospital bed. That's where
Speaker 1: he was when the paparazzi found him. He looks terrified.
Speaker 1: He's broken. His ship was gone, impaling itself onto the
Speaker 1: Seven Stones at full speed with a noise. One crewman said,
Speaker 1: look a slab of lead being ripped by spikes. Watching
Speaker 1: from his trawler, Gefolich turned to his men, that's the
Speaker 1: end of her. She'll never get off. He was right.
Speaker 1: The crew escaped safely, but during an attempt to re
Speaker 1: float the ship, there was a huge explosion. One of
Speaker 1: the salvage team was killed. By then, Torry Canyon's back
Speaker 1: was already broken and her underbelly sliced open by the
Speaker 1: teeth of the reef. She was bleeding one hundred and
Speaker 1: nineteen thousand tons of crude oil into coastal waters. It
Speaker 1: was an environmental catastrophe. The oil spill was unprecedented. Even today,
Speaker 1: there are places where you can still see the dark
Speaker 1: stain on the coast. Torry Canyon was, at the time
Speaker 1: the largest shipwreck in history and the largest maritime insurance claim.
Speaker 1: Rugiati took responsibility. He was the captain, and he was,
Speaker 1: he said, in charge of the best ship in their
Speaker 1: world for a ship's captain. His ship is all and
Speaker 1: I have lost mine. I'm terrified by the dimensions which
Speaker 1: the accident has assumed. The inquiry was conducted in private.
Speaker 1: Journalists weren't allowed in, but the manager of the hotel
Speaker 1: where the proceedings were being held told one of them
Speaker 1: that he had seen Captain Rugiati. I had a glimpse
Speaker 1: of this man. I had the impression of a man finished.
Speaker 1: He very seldom have so strong an impression from so
Speaker 1: short of seeing a man. I must answer for everything,
Speaker 1: for everyone. I must carry the cross alone. I wish
Speaker 1: I could tell the people of Cornwall how sorry I am,
Speaker 1: And he really was sorry. It was very bad. The
Speaker 1: disaster broke Rugiati. He spent months in hospital recovering from
Speaker 1: the strain and the anxiety and the heartbreak, which is
Speaker 1: where the eager photographers found him. A transcript of the
Speaker 1: inquiry was leaked to the journalist Richard Petro. The tanker
Speaker 1: owners were keen to downplay any fault on their part,
Speaker 1: including the fact that the steering had broken in the past,
Speaker 1: confusing Captain Ruggiati when the ship had failed to turn.
Speaker 1: But why had the ship failed to turn in those
Speaker 1: last moments? It was a small thing. After Ruggiahti had
Speaker 1: accidentally called the officer's dining room and slammed down the receiver,
Speaker 1: he looked across the bridge. From his position by the telephone,
Speaker 1: he could see that someone had inadvertently knocked the steering
Speaker 1: control lever. The ship's steering had simply been disconnected. All
Speaker 1: Ruggiati needed to do was switched the lever back and
Speaker 1: dragged Torry Canyon over to port. But he had lost time.
Speaker 1: With thirty seconds more to maneuver, I could have avoided
Speaker 1: the rocks. Ruggiati had made a plan, and as one
Speaker 1: small problem after another made the plan riskier and risk
Speaker 1: here he hadn't been able to adjust. Many leader things
Speaker 1: added up to one big disaster. That's true. The deadline,
Speaker 1: the currents, the fishing boats, the error from his junior officer,
Speaker 1: the steering control. It's bad luck thirty seconds before the
Speaker 1: sheep she was saved. But the missing thirty seconds aren't
Speaker 1: what interests me. What interests me are the two hours
Speaker 1: that Ruggiati had to save his Torry Canyon, the best
Speaker 1: ship in the world. He had two hours to reroot
Speaker 1: outside the aisles of Scilly, two hours to slow the
Speaker 1: ship down, two hours to ask for advice or to
Speaker 1: turn towards the wider channel, but he didn't do any
Speaker 1: of those things. After the exploitative photograph was released, there
Speaker 1: was a surge of sympathy for Ruggiati from around the world.
Speaker 1: People wrote letters of consolation. One that caught my eye
Speaker 1: was from a thirteen year old boy from County Cork
Speaker 1: in Ireland. I see beautiful tankers, but I'm sure I've
Speaker 1: never seen one as beautiful as yours. I thought and
Speaker 1: prayed for you. I am sure you will sail the
Speaker 1: seas again. Pastrengo Rougiati never did. His mistake was just
Speaker 1: too grave, But at the same time, it was also
Speaker 1: all too human. After all, it's our nature to be
Speaker 1: slow to change course. You've been listening to Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to find out more about the ideas
Speaker 1: in this episode, including links to our sources, the show
Speaker 1: notes are on my website, Tim Harford dot com. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is written and presented by me Tim Harford. Our
Speaker 1: producers are Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The sound designer
Speaker 1: and mixer was Pascal Wise, who also composed the amazing music.
Speaker 1: This season stars Alan Cumming, Archie Panchabi, Toby Stevens and
Speaker 1: Russell Tovey, with enso Celenti, Ed Gochen, Melanie Gutteridge, Mercia Munroe,
Speaker 1: Rufus Wright and introducing Malcolm Gladwell. Thanks to the team
Speaker 1: at Pushkin Industries, Julia Barton, Heather Faine, mil LaBelle, Carlie Milliori,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg and of course the mighty Malcolm Gladwell. And
Speaker 1: thanks to my colleagues at The Financial Times