Disaster not reported in nautical style (From The Oxford Times)

Disaster not reported in nautical style

3:28pm Wednesday 1st February 2012 in Gray Matter By Christopher Gray

Still on the subject of shipwrecks, the disaster involving the Costa Concordia was followed by a stern dressing down to careless journalists in the letters column of The Times from Vice Admiral Sir Christopher Morgan. He complained of the media’s failure to employ “proper nautical language” in stories on the matter. “For instance vessels do not crash into rocks, they run aground. A vessel the size of the Costa Concordia is a ship not a boat [all cruise vessels are, regardless of size, I was told by experts on my recent trip to Egypt and Lebanon], and when severely damaged they do not tilt, they list.”

He added: “Finally, despite learned debate a few years ago, I believe ships should be referred to as ‘she’ not ‘it’.”

A few days later, another salty dog, Rear-Admiral Guy Liardet, wrote to the newspaper to correct Admiral Morgan (was he once Captain Morgan, as in the rum? I wonder). He noted: “That the Costa Concordia was holed on her port side and ended up leaning to starboard argues ‘loll’ not ‘list’.”

John Pope, of Tisbury, Wiltshire, asked: “Do these ugly, ungraceful, top-heavy, floating hotels, whose hotel functions predominate over seaworthiness, really qualify to be flattered with the name of ship?”

It was pretty clear that he continued his letter (taking up Admiral Morgan’s last point): “As for whether they should be ‘it’, perhaps we might coin a new pronoun combining elements of both.”

However, the first seven words of the foregoing sentence(or words similar) were omitted in the letter’s published form, thus spoiling a rather good joke for readers unaware of what the admiral had written.

As an example of bad subbing, it can be compared with a story in the Home section of this week’s Sunday Times which told of Marco Pierre White’s purchase of the Black Boy pub in “the village of Milton, near Abingdon”, and predicted a boom in the price of property there because of people’s eagerness to try the chef’s dishes. Woops! They would have some way to travel for them: the Black Boy is at the other end of the county, in Milton, near Banbury.