Run aground on Bramble Bank

6 January 2015

Southampton doesn’t often hit the world headlines but this week you can hardly turn on the news without hearing about it. The cause of all this hooha is a sandbank in the Solent called Bramble Bank, or, more correctly, a huge car transporter ship called the Hoegh Osaka that ran around on it on Saturday night. All in all it sounds like a very costly cock up on someone’s part and I thought I’d use my Tuesday walk to have a look.

The Bramble Bank, known locally as The Brambles, is a sandbar in the Solent close to the Isle of Wight and roughly between Calshot and Lepe Beach. Most of the time it’s more or less invisible but during low water spring tides the Royal Southern Yacht Club and the Island Sailing Club hold an annual cricket match on the exposed arrowhead shaped sandbar. The match is usually ended by the incoming tide and is more about a bit of fun and tradition than any actual competition. The rest of the time it’s a hazard for ships coming in and out of Southampton to navigate and it’s marked by the Brambles post sea mark and the West Knoll buoy. Obviously not well enough.

Sadly, there would be no time to actually walk all the way to Calshot or Lepe and back, a journey of over eleven miles even if I crossed on the Hythe Ferry, closer to twenty if I walked the long way round. Forty miles in a day is a bit of a stretch even for me so the walk started out with a bus journey. This would probably have been slightly easier if Tuesday wasn’t the first day of bridge repairs on the Big Bridge but that’s going to be a problem for the next twenty weeks so I guess I’m going to have to get used to it.

Because of a doctors appointment first thing (more of that another time) and the chaos on the Big Bridge I missed the bus I’d originally intended to catch and ended up with time on my hands. A coffee that I ended up binning because it made me feel sick (all will be explained later I promise) and a traipse around WestQuay where I spent my Christmas vouchers filled it admirably. When I came out again I was rather annoyed to see the bus I wanted disappearing into the distance a good twenty minutes before it was due. As the bus to Calshot only runs once and hour this was annoying to say the least. The rain that had started to fall while I’d been shopping didn’t exactly make me feel better either. My first thought was to give up and go home.

Just then a lady came up to me and asked me if I’d mind reading the bus timetable for her. She had cataracts, she said, and the writing was too small for her. Of course I happily obliged. It turned out she was waiting for the number 8, the same as me, or the 9. When I told her I’d just seen an 8 leaving we both grumbled a bit but, luckily for her, the next 9 was due in about fifteen minutes. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to see the bus coming, I felt bad to be leaving her there so I said I’d wait and tell her when I could see the 9. This turned out to be very fortuitous, good karma for my good deed, and my bus arrived almost exactly on time. We both got on. Perhaps the one I’d seen leaving was the earlier bus running very, very late.

As we made our way out of Southampton the rain seemed to be getting worse. This made me wonder if I was sane at all to be going to what is a rather wild and windy place at the best of times. At this rate any photos I got would be terrible and any walking I did would be anything but pleasurable. Still, I was on the bus, the journey takes an hour and a quarter, so I sat and hoped things would clear up.

It’s surprising how uncomfortable a bus seat gets after that length of time, even if the scenery outside is as interesting as the thatched cottages of the New Forest. When the bus finally pulled up at Calshot, the end of the line, I was pleased to get off and stretch my legs. The rain had more or less stopped and, in the distance, there was a tiny sliver of blue underneath the grey clouds.

The last time I visited Calshot I was about ten and on a school trip. There’s a study centre on Calshot spit boasting indoor rock climbing, dry ski slopes, a velodrome and archery. Sadly, I don’t recall what I did there, and none of the above, with the possible exception of archery, sounds at all familiar. Walking down towards the shore I recognised nothing, not the row of coloured beach huts lining the shore, the narrow road behind them or the shingle beach itself. The brooding black clouds were a bit of a worry. There was an hour and a quarter before the return bus and no shelter of any kind.

When I passed between the beach huts onto the shingle beach the place was crowded with people looking out to sea with binoculars or setting up expensive looking cameras. The stricken ship was obviously drawing the crowds. Any worries I might have had about finding it evaporated in seconds, all I had to do was look where everyone else was looking. What I really could have done with at this point was a telephoto lens. Maybe I should have hopped onto the Red Jet and gone to the Isle of Wight instead. As if thinking about it had conjured it up, I saw the little Red Jet speeding across the waves in the distance.

Even from the distance of the opposite shore the size of the problem was obvious. This is not a small ship and it’s well and truly scuppered. When news of the accident first broke it did seem a little odd that a modern ship, presumably fitted with all manner of high tech navigation equipment should make such a basic error. The sandbank is well known after all but it wouldn’t be the first time a ship has managed to get stuck on it. Back in 2008 the Queen Elizabeth 2 got entangled with it on her final visit to Southampton. It took four tugs to wrench her free and made her ninety minutes late into port.

It seems there is more to this recent disaster than meets the eye though. The ship’s owners have now said the captain, master and pilot deliberately ran the ship onto the sandbank because it was listing and they believed it was about to sink. Quite why it was listing so soon after leaving port is another matter. Thankfully all the crew were rescued but the salvage operation is going to take some time and, as the cargo consists of some very expensive cars, there is a great deal of money at stake. More of a worry is the risk of oil leaking. So far this hasn’t happened, hopefully it will stay that way.

So, I’d seen what I’d come to see within the first few minutes of arriving. There was over an hour to kill until the bus back. Quite what I was going to do with that hour remained to be seen. There has been a settlement at Calshot since the fifth century AD but it’s a small place most notable for the mile long walk along the flint pebble shore to the end of the spit. Leaving the spectators to watch the grounded ship, I began to crunch into the rainy wind along the shingle admiring the colours of the beach huts. There’s something very cheery about beach huts, even if the sky is grey and threatening.

Behind the huts the chimneys of Fawley oil refinery loomed over the salt marshes. Fawley dominates the views across Southampton Water from my own little shore. The distant spires and towers make me think of a futuristic city but this was the closest I’d ever been to them. Somehow, any charm they may have from across the water is lost up close. There was a temptation to airbrush them out of the picture I took. They do serve a purpose though. Apart from the obvious, refining oil, the cooling water they discharge into the shallows around Calshot beach are said to warm the water and even to attract warm water wildlife that would otherwise not venture into our cool seas. They call it thermal pollution but, in my mind, it might be a good thing.

At the very end of the spit there a castle, or at least one of Henry VIII’s defensive forts, and I was making for that. Whether it would be open or not remained to be seen but, despite the wind in my face, I was determined to find out.