The latest incident involves a cargo ship backing into the Genoa Port Authority tower. Andrea Doria must be spinning in his grave. For context, colliding with the port authority tower is rather like commencing your driving test by rear ending the examiners car. It's a little difficult to tiptoe away and pretend nothing happened.
Certainly Italy is in an inconvenient position, sticking out as it does into the Mediterranean but honestly there is a fair amount of open water on three sides of it. Anybody attempting to sail to the fourth side should expect shallow water, and mountains. Part of the problem I suspect is that for the most part collisions at sea are rather rare. There is a hell of a lot of water out there and all the ships in the world don't make much of a dent in it (although they are putting a bit of a dent in Italy). This holds true until you get to port. It's analogous to driving down an empty road, the danger is in the parking.
In light of Italy's new found vulnerability to at sea collisions I think it is up to me to provide some helpful advice to ship captains attempting to navigate (apparently a more flexible term than I believed) the waters around it.
- Firstly; equip yourself with a helpful phrasebook including lines like, "Excuse me, your fiat uno appears to be entangled in my propellor" and "I'm very sorry, I swear there was an ocean here yesterday".
- Secondly; make sure your satnav is one of the more modern ones that includes Italy. Any one manufactured after the birth of Christ should suffice.
- Thirdly; I don't care how much time it will shave off your journey, don't listen to the guy who says he knows a shortcut via Milan.
- Fourthly; if you do look out over the bridge and see the Colosseum gliding past, its probably time to hit the brakes and reverse.
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