Ah, life on the seashore . . . the smell of the salt air, the roar of the pounding surf, the cries of the soaring gulls . . .

. . . and the crashing of the 443-foot-long container ship running aground in your front yard.

Well, that doesn’’t happen every day. But that is how Johan Helberg of Byneset, Norway, was awakened on Thursday morning. Actually, he didn’t hear the ship at all; it turns out that he’s a very sound sleeper. But his neighbor, Jostein Jorgensen, was awakened around 5:00 a.m. by the sound of a vessel approaching unusually close to shore. He looked out the window, saw the ship racing toward land, and ran outside shouting to his neighbors . . . perhaps something on the order of, “The containers are coming! The containers are coming!” . . . much like Paul Revere warning of the approach of British troops, only in Norwegian.

Still, Helberg slept. He didn’t hear the banging at his door, either. It was only when his neighbor rang his phone that he finally awakened.

“I went to the window and was quite astonished to see a big ship. . . . Five metres further south and it would have entered the bedroom. I didn’t hear anything,” Helberg told the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. [Francesca Gillett, BBC News, May 23, 2025.]

Luckily for everyone, the ship missed the house by a distance of about 26 feet, and no one onboard or ashore was injured. The shipping company sent a tugboat to try to pull it free, but without success. Then a salvage company tried to refloat it at high tide, but the ship remained stubbornly stuck.

The latest word from the owners of the big new eyesore on Trondheim Fjord is that geotechnical investigations will be required before another attempt is made to move the load. In the meantime, the neighborhood has 16 temporary residents, a really big tourist attraction, and a hell of a tale to tell their friends.

And so ends another idyllic day at the shore.

I do love a good news story where no one was killed or maimed . . . don’t you?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
5/24/25