In a recent article I spoke of the situation now reached in the circulation of traffic at sea as ‘a second spring’. Indeed, after a gloomy winter marked by a sequence of disasters in the Dover Strait it was some comfort to regard them as seed sown in a soil from which new life would not be slow in coming forth. This promise of spring was clear for example in the bold propositions adopted by Imco: ‘To prohibit traffic in the opposite direction on one-way routes’ and ‘to establish a Dover Strait fund’.