Burning Boats......

[capercanuck]

I don't know if this could be classified as a Stupid Human Trick or not.I live on Cape Breton Island, a big rock that juts out into the North Atlantic. A few times a year the local fire departments get calls for boats on fire. The calls normally come in late at night. The fire trucks go screaming to the shore line to be greeted by what really looks like a freighter or cargo ship on fire miles off shore. The fire department can deal with near shore emergencies, but off shore emergencies are something completely different. So they just basically stand around, waiting for the coast guard to respond. Out of all the "boat on fire" reports I have seen over the years, I have only seen one that was an actual "boat on fire". The others, which was explained to me by an old salt, are the big cargo boats and freighters that travel from the Great Lakes down the Eastern Seaboard to Halifax and New England. Some of these vessels have a habit of burning their garbage and waste in big barrels on their decks late at night when they are far off shore. To see one of these things burning, in the pitch black of the night, against a completely black horizon is really amazing. You would swear that she was going down with all her crew. Anyway, when you see the manpower that is wasted because some deckhand decides to burn that weeks garbage, it really does seem to be a Stupid Human Trick.