The Wreckers

by Bella Bathurst

  My last anxiety—that I would be dealing only with a series of unverifiable anecdotes—required a more complex solution. One of the difficulties of researching a book about a crime is that criminals are not generally known for writing about their activities. I found plenty of official and semi-official documents: court proceedings, newspaper reports, travellers’ journals, customs correspondence—but much less direct information from the wreckers themselves. For events within living memory, I was lucky. In the years it took to research this book, I have been stunned by the generosity and loquacity of many of the people I have spoken to. The ‘wreckers’ may be few and far between, and they may have required some convincing that I was not the Receiver of Wreck in disguise or a Customs and Excise officer calling fifty years too late, but when they did talk, they had exceptional tales to tell. My initial fears that wrecking in all its diverse forms was dead, that no-one would be prepared to speak to me, and that there was nothing to find, proved groundless.

  But with past incidences of wrecking, the research was more complicated. Where information from the wreckers themselves did exist, it could not always be cross-checked with other sources or be taken at face value. However long ago it was committed, a crime remains a crime. And so, in stitching together the tale of a particular area or wreck, I have done my best to use material taken from as many sources as possible, and to state clearly which parts of that story have been corroborated by other evidence. Ultimately, however, if I had had to rely solely on material which could be unassailably authenticated, this book would have been a very thin volume indeed. I have therefore chosen to include the stories and incidents which I felt were both relevant and entertaining, and done my best to point out where and when my research has moved from the solid to the speculative.

  During the three years it took to research and write this book, I conducted interviews with around 200 people and received help from countless more. Two of those interviewees were women. The sea was and will remain a masculine space. There are plenty of women now working for HM Coastguard, or running maritime museums, or involved in the diving community, but the vast majority of those who still use the sea—either professionally or for pleasure—are men. Parts of this book therefore use ‘he’ or ‘him’ when, strictly speaking, I should have included both sexes. But for the purposes of this book I’ve done the unfeminist thing and taken mankind to represent all humanity. I have done the opposite with ships. The vessels men sailed in are, and always have been, feminine. No one quite knows why—theories range from the anglicisation of classical pronouns or the lovelorn pinings of ancient sailors—but that is how it is and has always been—at least until March 2002, when Lloyd’s List, the daily gospel of the shipping industry, announced that all ships would henceforth be known as ‘it’. The List’s editor, Julian Bray, was quoted as saying, ‘We see it as a reflection of the modern business of shipping. Ultimately they are commodities, they are commercial assets. They are not things that have character—either male or female.’ Leaving aside the understanding that a rusty bulk-carrier full of toxins might not be as generous a reflection on my gender as, say, a slim and elegant tea-clipper, I have still stuck to the old designation. In this book, ships are ‘she’—partly for consistency, but mainly just because most people like it better that way.

  ***

  One last thing. This book is about wreckers and wrecking. It is not about salvage, or about wreck diving, or about the many noble efforts to make the sea safer. So if at times it gives the impression that those who lived around Britain’s coasts were, at best, a bunch of alcoholic opportunists and, at worst, a mob of covert murderers, then that is because I have left the more benign sides of human nature to other books and other writers. This book is about what happens where the shore meets the sea, and human need meets human tragedy. Part of that story—a part large enough to fill several farther volumes—is connected to lifesaving and the efforts made by all local communities at all periods in history to rescue strangers from danger. Wrecking is one part of the tale of our coasts, but rescue in all its forms, from the RNLI to the efforts of unsung individuals, is another. And though it is not the role of this book to examine the history of all that exceptional sacrifice, it would also be wrong for any reader to remain unaware of it.

  The most striking aspects of wreckers and lifesavers are that their twin histories do not necessarily exist in tandem. Broadly speaking, the history of wrecking has remained the same from the beginnings of civilisation to the present day. Shipwrecks bring free loot, and people like free loot. A rare few of those people will provoke a wreck, some will plunder an existing wreck at the expense of the crew or passengers, but the majority will only take things from a ship or a shoreline when they are sure that they are not doing so at the expense of other people’s lives. Lifesaving, however, is different. Attitudes to rescuing others at sea are intimately bound up with all sorts of other matters: religion or the lack of it, money or the lack of it, the Enlightenment, state-sponsored humanitarianism, superstition, charity and, above all, the changing values placed on human life down the centuries. In the twenty-first century it is an unquestioned absolute that life is more precious than property. Whether or not Britons believe in God, we undoubtedly believe that sending a boatload of gold ingots to the bottom of the sea is a worthy exchange for the lives of that boat’s crew. But we did not always hold such humanitarian views. There have been plenty of times in the past when human life did not carry its current value, and when dispensing with a couple of intransigent passengers seemed a small price to pay for a hogshead of ale or a bolt of raw silk. Life was cheap because life brought no guarantees, and because very few people were prepared to pay the market rate. It was cheap because shipwrecks were simply the price of going to sea, and because every sailor who ever left the land knew the odds were stacked against him.

  In 2002 an Oxford University study published in the Lancet examined statistics for the most hazardous professions in Britain. The study found that fishing and seafaring were, by a very high margin indeed, the professions with the highest numbers of fatalities. Forget mining, or offshore oil working, farming or crane driving, trawlermen were fifty times more likely to die at work than any other profession. Except, of course, for merchant seafarers, who were twenty-five times more likely to die at work. Between 1976 and 1995, fishermen suffered 103 fatal accidents per 100,000 worker years, whereas construction workers suffered 8 deaths per 100,000 worker years, and those in the service industry only 0.7. As the authors of the study pointed out, mortality rates in both fishing and seafaring are decreasing, but only because the numbers of fishermen and seafarers are themselves decreasing. The numbers of those killed at sea had, in fact, remained almost unchanged since the first Royal Commission was appointed in the 1830s to enquire into the causes of shipwreck. From the first moment at which the first sailor set a course for the unexplored horizon, mariners have always known that those who managed to survive the hazards of shipboard life—disease, accidents, overcrowding, malnutrition, the cruelties of on-board discipline—were just as likely to perish through shipwreck, storm or collision. And all seafarers knew that the laws of a stable world do not apply in a place where nothing, not even the floor beneath their feet, remains at rest for long.

  And so sailors went to sea, and the sea (or disease, or corruption, or wreckers) killed them, and for centuries that was just how things were; they took the money, but they paid the price. It was not until well into the eighteenth century that seafarers began to fight back. Even when they did, it was not the men who actually had to face the danger who began agitating for change, but shipowners depressed at having to write off 10 or 20 per cent of their revenue to shipwreck every year. Saving lives at sea therefore began not through some sudden impulse of compassion, but because someone worked out that it would be cheaper to keep sailors alive. Within the space of a century, Britain gained lighthouses, lifeboats, load lines, watertight bulkheads, effective anti-scorbutics, cork lifejackets, and several parlia
mentary committees. In the process, they also lost the notorious coffin ships on which emigrants vanished into the New World, plus many of the crueller excesses of shipboard life. The English lighthouse authority—which up until the early eighteenth century had been much more interested in making money on patents than in spending it on lights—began to follow the example of the Scottish authority, which occasionally got around to building things. By stringing a chain of lights around the British coastline, the Stevensons in Scotland and the Douglasses in England were indirectly responsible for saving an uncountable number of lives. In 1823, William Hillary published his pithily-titled pamphlet ‘An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck’, and the following year the RNLI was founded. After prolonged agitation, Samuel Plimsoll introduced compulsory load lines, indicating the point to which a ship could safely be weighted.

  In 1824, Lloyd’s Register of Shipping began keeping annual figures for United Kingdom and worldwide shipping losses. Those naked statistics and the shocking facts they betrayed did as much to alter public opinion as a thousand brave men ploughing through gales. The changes continued into the twentieth century with proper medical and lifeboat provision for passengers, VHF, satellite-based navigational systems such as Decca, Loran and GPS; radar, sonar, shipping forecasts, coastguard patrols, Search and Rescue (SAR) helicopters, and so on. Though it was impossible to quantify how many lives each new piece of technology was responsible for saving, the RNLI celebrated its centenary in 1924 with the announcement that in the hundred years since Hillary’s pamphlet almost 60,000 lives had been saved.

  There is no question that the past two centuries have seen an exceptional reversal in attitudes to lifesaving, and that all of Britain has benefited as a result. There are still tragedies, disasters and abuses, and the sea still remains a lethal place, but the sheer fact that so much time and courage is devoted to life-saving at sea is, and should remain, a source of national pride. The Stevensons and the lifeboats represent the lighter side of humanity; now here is the dark.

  Great Britain

  ONE

  False Lights

  The human body is better at life than it is at death. We are blunt objects made for subtle intents; we can turn our bodies to almost any task and find that we already have the necessary equipment inbuilt. We can survive injury, starvation, pain, breakage, disease, time and despair. We are designed to last and built to survive. We have almost everything we need to repair and defend ourselves, and what we lack, we find elsewhere. Every one of us inhabits our own biological masterpiece. But, like every grand design, we have our flaws. Many of them are surprising; while we remain resistant and adaptive to injury or disease, we are peculiarly vulnerable to changes in temperature. Raise or lower our core body heat by just a few degrees, and we start to lose function. Make the difference more extreme, and our organs cannot work. Maintain the heat or the cold for too long, and we die.

  Originally designed for the tropics, we remain elementally temperamental. Whether living in the Arctic or at the Equator, all of us have to maintain our core heat to within roughly half a degree of 37° Celsius. Half a degree is a change so slight that in the air around us it would feel imperceptible. Our external world is subject to huge surges and lapses in temperature; Britain, with its irresolute weathers, still varies between −20° in winter and +35° in summer. But in order to keep ourselves alive and functional, we need to keep our core body temperature stable at all times, whether in winter, summer, ice or fire. It is an extraordinary feat, and it takes an extraordinary amount of energy.

  Most of the time, clothes (or the lack of them) help to do the job for us. Over the centuries, we have evolved the capacity to moderate the effect of the environment on our bodies with the addition or subtraction of a layer of fur or wool or denim or Gore-tex. Apply the right layers of clothing and the internal temperature of someone in −40° Greenland will stay at the same level as someone in t-shirt and shorts in +40° sub-Saharan Africa. The trouble arises when we get wet. Water is our greatest vulnerability; we cannot live without it, but we cannot live within it. Like the earth itself, we are seven-tenths water. It is the great equaliser; the source of our subsistence. Everything we are or were or aim to be begins and ends at sea level. It dictates our capacity to survive and thrive as a nation, our view of ourselves, our defence, our past, our future. It gives us life, and it kills us. Most of the world’s oceans are filled with water lower than the temperature which we can safely tolerate for any length of time (20°C). Water conducts heat twenty-four times more efficiently than air; a body in water will cool four times more rapidly than on land.

  Those who fall into the sea—whether through accident or design—find themselves in a foreign element. Water aims to equalise as rapidly as possible; it wants you to become part of it, fast. It has no difficulty at all absorbing something as vulnerable as a human body. First it steals heat, then it steals energy, then—if it is rough, which the seas around the British Isles tend to be—it replaces the air in the lungs with water. And finally, it takes you down.

  Unfortunately a man overboard is notoriously difficult to spot. Once in the water, there is very little to be seen—just a head and a bit of splashing. The speed of the current will carry the victim soundlessly away while a ship takes time to turn and return. A small sailing yacht will probably only have a crew of two or three, and using one to keep a permanent lookout while using another to reef and steer is not easy. Add to that the hazards of poor visibility or bad weather, plus the strong possibility that the victim is not wearing safety gear, and an unscheduled swim does not seem such a shrewd idea.

  According to recent scientific advice, in order to have the best chance of surviving sudden immersion you should make sure you are in a calm and temperate sea—preferably the Mediterranean in mid-summer. You should also be male, and fit, but probably have a reasonable amount of fat as well. If female, then you may have a worse chance of surviving the initial shock of shipwreck but a better long-term prospect of survival, since women’s bodies store a higher percentage of fat than those of men. If you have the misfortune to fall into a cooler sea, then you should have spent time acclimatising yourself to the impact by taking regular cold baths. If you insist on drowning yourself in the waters around the British Isles, then try to do so on the west. The North Sea, lacking the benefit of the warming Gulf Stream, is generally at least two degrees colder than the Atlantic. If possible, you should be wearing a well-designed lifejacket, correctly sized and tied, and fitted with a splashguard. You should also be wearing clothing which provides a good ‘boundary layer’ around the skin (a wet suit, for instance). You should enter the water slowly and with caution, and remain as still as possible for the first couple of minutes while your body acclimatises. You should remain aware of the effects of cold on the nervous and circulatory system, and perform any tasks requiring manual dexterity as soon as possible after entering the water, since the cold will rapidly begin to numb your hands. As the amount of oxygen finding its way to the muscles decreases, even the strongest swimmers will eventually find themselves treading water. If you find a lifeboat or life-raft, but have the misfortune not to be rescued within a few hours, it may or may not be a consolation to know that you will survive for about a week with no fresh water, and between forty and sixty days with water but no food. Cannibalism is not recommended—like other meats, human flesh is comprised mainly of protein, and digesting protein depletes more of the body’s water stores than carbohydrates do. On no account should you drink sea water. As any gardener who has ever sprinkled salt on a slug could tell you, salt shrivels things. When salt water touches the lungs, it tightens the alveoli, fatally reducing oxygen capacity. If you wish to survive drowning, try to do so in fresh water.

  Though the notion that anyone who falls overboard is going to do so calmly and slowly in a freshwater sea while wearing the right clothes and having taken years of prep
aratory cold baths may seem ridiculous, there is at least a chance that a modern boat will be equipped with safety equipment and that the local coastguard could be alerted. A shipwreck victim in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries had no such hope. Safety equipment as such did not exist. There was no coastguard, no SAR helicopter, no lifeboat. In a gale, the crew’s best chance of survival was to bind themselves to the mast and wait it out. They knew there could be no emergency flare, no Mayday alert, no warning call from sea to land, no Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons, no fluorescent lifejackets equipped with whistles and splashguards.

  The only advantage that an eighteenth-century victim might have had over a twenty-first-century one was the availability of buoyant material. Modern yachts are built of fibreglass and modern ships of steel. Unless there is sufficient air left in the hull, both types go straight to the bottom of the sea if they capsize. Eighteenth-century vessels built of wood at least offered the mariner the consolation of watching his erstwhile safe haven float past him as he drowned. Presuming, of course, that he had actually managed to come up for air, since he probably could not even swim. Until well into the 1960s swimming classes were not compulsory in British schools. In many parts of the country people still remember being hurled off the local pier by their parents or elder siblings in the hope that they would float. If they floated, then they could survive, and that was all the tuition they needed. Besides, it wasn’t as if even that rudimentary lesson helped. There are still areas of Britain where until very recently, fishermen would even ignore the impulse to remain buoyant. If they fell overboard, they folded their arms, filled their boots, and met their fate. Once the sea has claimed someone, so the thinking went, no man—on land or on deck—could challenge that claim.