But on that sunny January 30th four centuries ago, a fully laden 60 tonne ship in Appledore harbour, north Devon, was picked up and dumped in nearby marshland.

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The ship was laden with munitions, crew and a few paying passengers, and its rescue has gone down in history as a catalogue of errors.

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Another container ship is travelling from Spain, laden with a further 40, 000 tonnes of salt, and a third is also heading to the UK with salt from Germany.

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Instead, Mr Zinni's mission was dominated by Israel's public-relations coup: its seizure off its Red Sea coast of a ship, the Karine-A, laden with 50 tonnes of arms.

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Other ship owners were still reacting to the crisis and fully laden with debt.

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His ship, the Terra Nova, sailed from the city's docks laden with Welsh coal, fuel, and supplies.

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The unit was the subject of a recent TV movie about the Bin Laden raid in Pakistan and will feature in another film, about the rescue of a ship's captain kidnapped by Somali pirates.

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