North Sea

Thirty-one years ago, an explosion in the pump room of SS Rapana, a Shell oil tanker,killed three men and badly injured another, about forty miles off the coast of Norway. The vessel was “modern” and had recently undergone a major refit in Malaysia but this thread on Ships Nostalgia suggests that the tragic event was an accident waiting to happen. The company seems to have failed in the duty of care it owed its employees.

Chief Officer David CAMMISH, 44 and a Filey man, was one of the trio killed instantly.

Though David was from the second most populous of Filey families and married a CAPPLEMAN (fifth in the charts), he is not represented in Filey Genealogy & Connections, nor on the FamilySearch Shared Tree. His wife Elizabeth Vera has a rich pedigree on her father’s side but one still has to go back two or three generations before they begin to appear on the Shared Tree. William Cappleman 1891-1972.

A tragedy on a much greater scale may unfold in the wake of HMS Defender, which crossed a line in the Black Sea on Tuesday – into the territorial waters of the Russian Federation. The UK regime’s assertion that Crimea belongs to Ukraine does not make it so. President Putin has explained what will happen if there is another provocation. With Exercise Sea Breeze 2021 launching in three days, we may not have long to wait to see if he is bluffing.