[ad_1]
At about 1 a.m. on November 15, 1994, Captain Prentiss “Skip” Strong III was awakened by a distress signal. Skip was a Cherry ValleyThat night, he and his crew were sailing off the Florida coast when a tropical storm rolled in. That night, the seas were surging, up to 15 feet high, and the winds were gusting up to 50 mph.
Now, as Skip stumbles to the bridge, he finds himself on the brink of an unfolding disaster. The distress call comes from a tugboat whose engines have failed in the storm. Now, the tugboat is adrift at sea, dangerously close to the coast. The only ship close enough to rescue is the Cherry Valley.
Skip faced a difficult decision. A fully loaded 688-foot tanker would hardly be anyone’s first choice of rescue vessel. It would be as maneuverable as a school bus on ice. And Cherry Valley The ship was carrying 10 million gallons of heavy fuel oil. A rescue attempt would take them into dangerous shallow waters. One wrong move and they would face an ecological disaster, like Exxon Valdez.
What happened next that night has been analyzed and debated for years. The actions of Skip and his crew led to an astonishing discovery, a record-setting lawsuit, and one of the strangest legal disputes in maritime history.
At the heart of it all is an unanswered question: How do you put a price on doing the right thing?
This episode was hosted by Jeff Guo, produced by Emma Peaslee, edited by Jess Jiang, and designed by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. Willa Rubin assisted with fact checking. Alex Goldmark is the executive producer of Planet Money.
Subscribe to Planet Money+ to help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes In Apple Podcasts or plus.npr.org/planetmoney.
These links are always free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, NPR App Or wherever you get your podcasts.
Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / Tik Tok / We Weekly communication.
Music: NPR Source Audio – “Trapped Like a Bird,” “New Western,” and “Outlaw Mystique”
[ad_2]
Source link
