The Branscombe Project

Branscombe residents have seen it all over the years: smugglers, ghosts and one of the most extraordinary shipwrecks the world has ever seen. CHRISSY HARRIS meets a woman helping to preserve the history of this fascinating village…

BARBARA Farquharson remembers exactly what she was doing the day the storm damaged MSC Napoli was run aground on Branscombe beach.

“We were coming back from London when we got this phone call telling us what had happened,” she says, recalling the moment in January 2007 when she heard a stricken cargo ship loaded with 2,300 containers and 3,800 tonnes of fuel was forced to come ashore near her home village on Devon’s world famous Jurassic Coast.

“We thought someone was having us on. We just couldn’t believe it. But really, that was just the start of it all,” says Barbara.

What happened over the next few weeks and months was incredible: hundreds of people from all over the UK descended on Branscombe to scavenge what they could from the stricken ship’s cargo that had washed up on the shore.

Images of these modern day ‘wreckers’ hauling boxes of shampoo, wine barrels and even BMW motorbikes still in their packing crates along the beach were beamed all over the world. Branscombe’s narrow roads and lanes quickly became completely gridlocked as booty-hunters, media teams and sightseers crammed in to get a look at the sinking ship.

In the background was the constant threat of a pollution catastrophe as maritime experts worked tirelessly to prevent a major oil spill from the wreckage.