Daniel Defoe had a shrewd idea of what appealed to the human imagination, not just in fictions like Robinson Crusoe. In the account of his tour of Britain, he took care to mention the monstrous rib-bone of a whale set up on the Ilford road. The whale, he says, had been washed up in the year before Oliver Cromwell died. Such things endure in popular memory. An equivalent today is the vast bulk of the 51,000-ton Hoegh Osaka. Its grounding on Bramble Bank, with no casualties, marked the beginning of the innocent spectator sport of watching the chancey efforts to salvage the ship. Its unexpected floating by the high tide yesterday brought a new element of uncertainty, as rough weather bore down on Britain. This will not be another Whisky Galore, with the people of the Isle of Wight driving new Jaguars or JCBs. But one day it will make a page-turning tale.
