This picture of the Torrey Canyon, the first of the supertankers was taken by the late Jim Bottrell, of Penzance. It shows the tanker with 120,000 tons of oil hard afast Pollard's Rock in the Seven Stones reef, off Land's End, on March 18, 1967. Thirty-one million gallons of oil leaked and spread along the sea between England and France, killing most of the wildlife along the whole of the south coast of Britain and Normandy shores in France. All sorts of emergency measures were tried, many of which made matters worse. Lots of chemical dispersants were eventually sprayed on to the oil slick, but these were more lethal for wildlife than the original oil.
