I loved Jason Kottke’s intro to this article (the article was pretty rockin’ too):

The story of a salvage team racing to save the Cougar Ace, a 55,000 ton cargo ship packed with Mazda cars valued at $103 million that nearly flipped when the ballast tanks on either side of the ship got out of balance. If the team succeeds, they get ~10% of the cargo’s value and if not, they don’t get paid…either way, someone might die.