Idiom: Right the ship
I bet when you saw this picture, you immediately thought about how they would right the ship.
You were probably somewhat surprised, right?
Imagine the reaction of the people on board the vessel when they suddenly found themselves listing at a 60° angle.
Well, this is a real incident.
I remember it from a few years ago.
The ship is an automobile carrier, and its name is the Cougar Ace.
She was carrying more than 4,000 Mazda vehicles on a trip from Japan to Canada.
Something went wrong, and she ended up on her side.
You may be even more surprised to learn that salvagers were able to right the ship, the cars were saved, and they were all sold as new cars.
That’s right.
People were able to right the ship and save the cargo.
So what does this have to do with learning English?
Well, it’s a perfect literal example of the meaning of the phrase right the ship.
Things can be saved and put back into regular working order as if nothing happened.
In a figurative sense, it is often possible to right the ship when things go wrong in life or business.
Things are never as bad as they seem to be.
When a business experiences financial challenges, new competition, or adverse situations caused by recent technological advances, it may get itself into trouble.
If they believe nothing is impossible and are willing to make changes, they can right the ship and get back on course.
The same goes for our personal lives.
Life is hard.
We all know this.
From time to time, we all experience various degrees of difficulty in our lives.
However, with a positive attitude and hard work, we can right the ship, get back on track and get on with our lives.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 75.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
