At around 1 a.m. on the morning of November 15, 1994, Captain Prentice "Skip" Strong III woke to a distress call. Skip was the new captain of an oil tanker called the Cherry Valley. He and his crew had been making their way up the coast of Florida that evening when a tropical storm had descended. It had been a rough night of 15 foot waves and 50 mile per hour winds. The distress call was coming from a tugboat whose engines were failing in the storm. Now adrift, the tugboat was on a dangerous collision course with the shore. The only ship close enough to mount a rescue was the Cherry Valley. Skip faced a difficult decision. A fully loaded, 688-foot oil tanker is hardly anyone's first choice of a rescue vessel. It is as maneuverable as a school bus on ice. And the Cherry Valley was carrying ten million gallons of heavy fuel oil. A rescue attempt would put them in dangerously shallow water. One wrong move, and they would have an ecological disaster on the order of the Exxon Valdez. What happened next that night would be dissected and debated for years to come. The actions of Skip and his crew would lead to a surprising discovery, a record-setting lawsuit, and one of the strangest legal battles in maritime history. At the center of it all, an impossible question: How do you put a price tag on doing the right thing?Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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Before we start, a warning.
This episode features sailors and people who curse like sailors.
So, yeah, strong language ahead.
This is Planet Money from NPR.
So this is the kind of story that starts in a very classic way.
Ah, yeah.
Twas a dark and stormy night.
That is Captain Prentice Strong III.
Everyone calls him Skip.
And on a dark and stormy night about 30 years ago, Skip was in charge of an oil tanker called the Cherry Valley.
They have been making their way up the coast of Florida, and they are getting slammed by this tropical storm.
We've got waves coming on deck.
We're probably in twelve to 15 foot seas, and they're coming at us.
So we're rolling.