Bananas split: fruit washes up on beach after falling from ship

It isn’t quite Whisky Galore! - the classic film in which residents of a Scottish island attempt to pilfer 50,000 cases of spirit from a shipwreck.

- Steven Morris

Rather than the prospect of finding a warming dram or two, people on the south coast of England have been coming across bunches of bananas after containers fell off the back of a ship and washed up on beaches in West Sussex.

Initially, HM Coastguard issued stern warning that the finds ought to be reported to the receiver of wreck, the UK government civil servant whose role can be traced back to a time when pirates, smugglers and looters tried to hide their plunder.