Concerns over shipping's impact on the environment are nothing new, as a recently discovered cache of letters has illustrated.
Writing 175 years ago, British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel noted his fears that ships, trains and factories were harming the natural world.
The top-hat-wearing polymath worried that factory waste was polluting water supplies, but seemed to be more concerned over how Bristol docks were becoming clogged with mud, causing large vessels to run aground.
Writing in 1842, Brunel said the port's floating harbour was being used as a receptacle for rubbish.
And he acknowledged that his Great Western Railway was harming the environment, as were a local cotton mill, iron merchants and shipyards.
He also criticised the “general abandonment of care” shown by the directors of Bristol docks while the SS Great Britain, the ship he designed and which became the world’s largest, was being built there.
UK newspaper the Guardian reports that Brunel claimed the directors failed to act on his recommendations to prevent ships getting stuck in the mud, leading to “monstrous abuses by which the Channel of t he upper part of the Float has been wilfully and wantonly choked up”.
Nick Booth, head of collections at the SS Great Britain Trust, said: “It would be going too far to suggest Brunel was an environmentalist. His concerns are foremost about the implications for trade.
“But this does provide a glimpse of genuine concern about pollution and is perhaps another way Britain’s greatest engineer was way ahead of his time.”
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Viking Line is launching a competition to find a name for a new Chinese-built cruise ferry that will operate from Finland in 2021.
The prize is a "luxurious trip on the virgin voyage" of the ship.
What could possibly go wrong?
Two words: Boaty McBoatface.
