Took me 3 reads to parse it. The sentence makes sense, but is insanely ambiguous.
‘Search under way for two people in sea near Devon beach’ – How I would put it.
I was isolating ‘under’ as the preposition, and then treating ‘way off beach’ as adjective and noun (or possibly an uncapitalised proper noun). Naturally I was confused at how people can end up *under* a beach, whether the beach is way off, or whether it’s just Way Off Beach. I was a way off b****, though.
‘Off’ in the headline’s sense makes sense, but couple with ‘way’ it creates ambiguity, as described above. ‘In sea near’ eliminates that entirely.
smalbluething on
This is desperately sad. I hope they find the men safely.
Awful for the families and the people searching on Christmas day.
HeftyDanielson on
And people said the RNLI, and Health and Safety was going mad about the sea swim today and Boxing day.
Exmouth was manic this morning!
PityPartySommelier on
I was talking to my Exmouth based family as this was all happening.
The initial alert was just saying there was an incident and everyone needed to stay out of the water.
Perhaps the undertow caught them unawares? How awful for their families, the Christmas swim has always been a silly event, to have it end so tragically is something I can’t find words for.
DoNotCommentAgain on
Those waters are not to be taken lightly, they nearly claimed my Dad when he was a kid and then 30 odd years later nearly got me too. We’re both really strong swimmers and never had a problem anywhere else. The sea is angry around cornwall and devon, it should be treated with respect.
ChickenMcSandwich on
This is so fucking sad. I really hope they are found alive and cold somewhere.
Lord_Sam_ on
Several swims were cancelled due to weather… The coastguard and emergency services said don’t swim… They go swimming… I’m sympathetic up to a point. This is just natural selection.
DizzyDetective on
What a sad way to go. My thoughts are with the families of the missing/deceased.
mitchybenny on
There were warnings galore about not doing the Exmouth and Budleigh swims because the wind and sea were far from ideal, and as per 2025, people went ‘you can’t stop me!’, and a load of muppets went in Budleigh and tragedy happened.
The sea was horrendous. Warnings or not, people have eyes, and they chose to go in and caused emergency services to waste their day. I’m afraid if you ignore warnings and go in when you clearly shouldn’t, volunteers shouldn’t waste their time trying to save you.
fmcae on
An avoidable accident considering the weather. Too easy to think ‘won’t happen to me’. But sometimes it does and you end up dead. Now their families will be devastated and Christmas will never be the same for them. Doesn’t matter how strong, brave and macho people may think they are, none of us are a match for Mother Nature.
Sympathies to their family’s and respect to those in the emergency services who risk their lives on Christmas Day.
Dutch_Slim on
Spent some time in Budleigh this summer, absolutely mad to be swimming there in this weather.
codeduck on
Sympathy to the families and mad respect to the coastguard and RNLI crews.
The sea is the apex predator. People forget this at their peril.
FlappyBored on
Sadly these two arrogant fools have ruined their families lives despite multiple warnings and pleas to not swim.
The coast guard literally had to have boats on the coast to watch legions of fools enter the water despite them pleading people not to do it, and this is the result.
On some videos you can see absolute idiots in the water with their children with the coast guard in the background just watching from their boats.
13 Comments
Another badly constructed headline.
Took me 3 reads to parse it. The sentence makes sense, but is insanely ambiguous.
‘Search under way for two people in sea near Devon beach’ – How I would put it.
I was isolating ‘under’ as the preposition, and then treating ‘way off beach’ as adjective and noun (or possibly an uncapitalised proper noun). Naturally I was confused at how people can end up *under* a beach, whether the beach is way off, or whether it’s just Way Off Beach. I was a way off b****, though.
‘Off’ in the headline’s sense makes sense, but couple with ‘way’ it creates ambiguity, as described above. ‘In sea near’ eliminates that entirely.
This is desperately sad. I hope they find the men safely.
Awful for the families and the people searching on Christmas day.
And people said the RNLI, and Health and Safety was going mad about the sea swim today and Boxing day.
Exmouth was manic this morning!
I was talking to my Exmouth based family as this was all happening.
The initial alert was just saying there was an incident and everyone needed to stay out of the water.
Perhaps the undertow caught them unawares? How awful for their families, the Christmas swim has always been a silly event, to have it end so tragically is something I can’t find words for.
Those waters are not to be taken lightly, they nearly claimed my Dad when he was a kid and then 30 odd years later nearly got me too. We’re both really strong swimmers and never had a problem anywhere else. The sea is angry around cornwall and devon, it should be treated with respect.
This is so fucking sad. I really hope they are found alive and cold somewhere.
Several swims were cancelled due to weather… The coastguard and emergency services said don’t swim… They go swimming… I’m sympathetic up to a point. This is just natural selection.
What a sad way to go. My thoughts are with the families of the missing/deceased.
There were warnings galore about not doing the Exmouth and Budleigh swims because the wind and sea were far from ideal, and as per 2025, people went ‘you can’t stop me!’, and a load of muppets went in Budleigh and tragedy happened.
The sea was horrendous. Warnings or not, people have eyes, and they chose to go in and caused emergency services to waste their day. I’m afraid if you ignore warnings and go in when you clearly shouldn’t, volunteers shouldn’t waste their time trying to save you.
An avoidable accident considering the weather. Too easy to think ‘won’t happen to me’. But sometimes it does and you end up dead. Now their families will be devastated and Christmas will never be the same for them. Doesn’t matter how strong, brave and macho people may think they are, none of us are a match for Mother Nature.
Sympathies to their family’s and respect to those in the emergency services who risk their lives on Christmas Day.
Spent some time in Budleigh this summer, absolutely mad to be swimming there in this weather.
Sympathy to the families and mad respect to the coastguard and RNLI crews.
The sea is the apex predator. People forget this at their peril.
Sadly these two arrogant fools have ruined their families lives despite multiple warnings and pleas to not swim.
The coast guard literally had to have boats on the coast to watch legions of fools enter the water despite them pleading people not to do it, and this is the result.
On some videos you can see absolute idiots in the water with their children with the coast guard in the background just watching from their boats.