A ship getting hit by a hurricane may have suffered bad luck but consider the case of the Leicester which was hit twice in 1948 the first while at sea and the second time after it was towed to Bermuda by the salvage tugs, Foundation Josephine and Foundation Lillianthe.Dr. Edward Harris, a Royal Gazette columnist and who is also the Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, tells the tale of the Leicester:***The brush of the Samesk-as-Leicester with Bermuda history took place in October, 1948. Early the previous month, the Leicester left Tilbury in Britain for New York, loaded with gravel. On 14 September, the ship was about 700 miles northeast of Bermuda, when it was struck by massive waves from Hurricane VII, coming up from the Caribbean. The cargo shifted, causing the Leicester to list some 30 degrees to port, or to the left when facing forward. Passing ships rescued some of the crew and the vessel was abandoned, the list having increased to 70 degrees.Ten days later, the salvage tugs, Foundation Josephine and Foundation Lillian, found the Leicester and towed it into Murray’s Anchorage at Bermuda, the nearest port of safety, on 3 October 1948. This was after a difficult voyage, for the list and jammed rudder made the ship sheer from side to side. They were assisted in the entry by the US Army tug ST-10 from the US bases here, and an Admiralty one from the Bermuda Dockyard, the Justice. The Lillian left immediately for another rescue operation.Work began immediately with local labour to shift the cargo, so that the vessel would be upright once again. That procedure was going well, but four days later, Hurricane VIII struck Bermuda with winds in excess of 100 mph. The next morning found both the Josephine and the Leicester hard aground at Ferry Point near Whalebone Bay, the latter having dragged 30 tons of mooring anchors ashore.The Josephine was removed first by the dredger, Lord Cochrane and the ST-10, and was sent to the US for repairs that took six months. After much effort, the Leicester was pulled off the rocks on 19 October 1948 and towed into Penno’s Wharf in St. George’s Harbour. On 25 October, a tug from the famous Moran Company of New York, the Kevin Moran, began to tow the Leicester to New York, but it had to divert the operation via Newport News in Virginia. After another repair stop at Baltimore, the Leicester finally arrived at New York, the original port of destination, over 100 days out from Tilbury on a journey that would normally take less than two weeks.The Leicester was sold to the Nassau Maritime Company in 1950, when it became the Inagua, after one of the islands of The Bahamas, seeing a short military service during the Suez Crisis in 1956. Thereafter it was sold several times and was named the Serafin Topic (1958), the Jela Topic (1962) and lastly the Viking Liberty in 1965. After going aground at Trinidad in January 1966, the vessel was broken up at Santander later that year, after 22 years of oceanic service in the “Liberty” and civilian carrying trade.