ABSTRACT
The world's first major spillage of oil occurred when the Torrey Canyon was wrecked off the western coast of Cornwall in March 1967. At the time, such an environmental catastrophe was almost unimaginable. As an ever-widening oil slick began to drift towards Brittany and Cornwall, help arrived in the form of a Dutch salvage team. A record for the largest oil spill from a tanker since surpassed several times was set on 16 March 1978 when the super tanker Amoco Cadiz, carrying 1.6 million barrels of oil, ran onto rocks three miles off the coast of Brittany. While the oil spills off the French and British coasts were bad enough, an environmental disaster that surpassed these by far was to occur in one of the world's largely unspoilt wildernesses, Alaska. Exxon Valdez was a single-hulled ship and once it had been holed there was nothing to prevent its cargo from escaping.
