Thanks to maritime writer Peter Marsh for this little gem: Imagine looking out your window and finding a 443-foot container ship parked on the lawn. 

Well, that’s exactly what happened to Johan Helberg of Byneset, Norway. He and his family were sound asleep in their cabin on a fjord, unaware the NCL Salten had almost taken out his house until a neighbor knocked on his door to alert  him, according to gCaptain.

“We slept just 23 feet from where the bow is, and didn’t hear a thing,” Helberg said. “There were rocks and seaweed scattered around, so the ship must have scraped along quite smoothly.”

“We were lucky,” he added, in quite an understatement, since the ship was going about 16 knots (18 mph) at the time.

As it turned out, according to a follow-up story, the accident was caused by the ship’s second officer, who was alone on the bridge, and had fallen asleep. He has been rightly charged with “negligent navigation.”  (Photo: VG-Tipser)