A THUNDER OF CRUDE

by Brian Callison

To the layman's eye, the supertanker Calauria seems almost invulnerable. Longer than two football pitches, wider than a ten-lane highway, higher than a seven-story office block, the colossus is deep-laden with crude oil - enough, once refined, to keep a typical family car running for fifty thousand years, give or take a decade. Only an expert might suspect that the giant is sick. That years of cost-cutting and neglect have sapped her that her rusting plates and defective mechanisms have turned her into a powder keg of terrifying potency.The US-owned Panoco oil terminal in the little Scottish port of Vaila appears similarly impressive. Well maintained, efficiently run; a shining example of oil industry technology. But again, looks can be deceiving. Only those who understand its workings know how many corners have been how far the vital safety systems have been allowed to run down; how much of its emergency cover has been sacrificed in the pursuit of profit.Bring a powder keg to a potentially open add a superannuated Italian captain, a chief officer promoted beyond his capabilities, a persistently inquisitive female reporter in love with the wrong man, a Panoco watch controller afflicted by diarrhoea, an idealistic group of teenagers out to press their cause, and the community of a remote Highland village largely compelled to remain tight-lipped by their dependency on the jobs the terminal provides … Minute by minute, incident by incident, Brian Callison traces the countdown to catastrophe; expounds, with cool and convincing clarity based on an actual event, the chain of trivial accidents, human errors and mechanical failures which make his fearful climax first possible, then probable and, ultimately … inevitable.A Thunder of Crude has already been heard to deadly effect in petro-chemical disasters around the world. If the lessons of this enthralling novel are not taken to heart, then it will be heard again - and this time, louder still.'A superb story indeed, graphically told with sharp jolts of realism and with a fine and sensitive understanding … an absorbing tale.' Sunday Herald Traveler.

Genres: Novels

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 9, 1986

About the author

Brian Callison was a British novelist known for his best-selling thrillers and sea stories. Born in Manchester, England in 1934, he was educated at the High School of Dundee, and went to sea at the age of 16 as an apprentice with the Blue Funnel Line, sailing aboard cargo ships between ports in Europe and East Asia. Callison subsequently studied at Dundee College of Art in Scotland, and went into business. His first published novel, A Flock of Ships, appeared in 1970. In 2008 he completed a three-year appointment as a Fellow of The Royal Literary Fund at the University of Dundee, mentoring staff and students in all aspects of practical writing.
Callison died in Dundee on 5 February 2024, at the age of 89.

Reviews

[Robert Fontenot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overwritten and hard to parse. When I read a disaster novel I expect pathos and carnage but what this has is labyrinthine sentence structure and approximations of Scottish dialect. It is both hard to read and unrewarding when you do.