So the city, in 1867, sank an immense cylinder, or crib, 2 miles from shore to pump fresh water back to the inhabitants.

FORBES: A most unromantic river

Smit, which in charge of salvaging Prestige before it sank, said the operation - to pump the oil back to the surface - would cost nearly 50m euros and take several months to complete.

BBC: French sub to try patching Prestige

This is what this data is supposed to monitor, but the well flow evidence would appear to have been ignored, because at this point the BP rig supervisors should have gone to a well kill operation and started to pump heavy mud back into the well bore to restore the primary control mechanism.

WSJ: The Oil Disaster Is About Human, Not System, Failure