The Cat that went for an unexpected swim (Blog Re-Visited)

by Nick Drew | Mon 02 Jan 2017

The Cat that went for an unexpected swim (Blog Re-Visited)

I'm on holiday this week enjoying a bit of winter sun before the ensuing madness of 2017 kicks in, so I thought I would take a look back at some popular blog posts I wrote previously. These classic photos were taken in 1985, by professional photographer Tony Freeman, from Barnstable in Devon, who has kindly given me permission to reproduce them here on the Digger Man Blog. The photos actually appeared in a small article in the Western Morning News, back in the day.

Details about what actually happened here are somewhat sketchy, but from what I was told by the Coles boys, the Caterpillar 215 had been deployed into the river close to the Appledore shipyard, at low tide to clear out the silt build up which prevents new boats from being launched. Either the machine became bogged, or it had suffered a mechanical failure, which prevented it escaping before the tide came back in.

Another Caterpillar 200 series machine from the Coles Plant fleet was brought in to assist with the extraction of the stricken and somewhat waterlogged excavator. Let’s hope this Cat really did have nine lives!

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