Mariners, seafarers, navigators, adventurers and the like, have many ways to find their way about the wide open ocean.
A weighted plumb on the end of a long line, charged with a mass of sticky tallow. Deployed over the side into the sea, was soon retrieved with a sample from the ocean bed. With their knowledge of earlier passages the route could be re-traced by feeling and seeing what this primitive probe held at the foot.
A leisurely walk along the tideline of Beer in Devon, revealed these few clues to my location. Nodules of flint, a scallop shell, a whelk and a sensor of some sort off a BMW engine.
The black plastic moulding is scuffed and smoothed all round its edges from the abrasion since being washed off the container ship Napoli, beached near here in January 2007.
To remove this item from the beach at that time was soon to be made a criminal offence, but many took advantage of the opportunity regardless and items of far greater value than this were recovered from the shoreline.
The receiver of wrecks was nowhere to be seen yesterday, nine years after the hull of that stricken ship was cut up for scrap.
One of the divers engaged on the task of salvage operations was my nephew Jonathon.
The seabed between Portland and Plymouth today remains littered with plenty more BMW motor parts.
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