The Wreckers

by Bella Bathurst

  It is therefore unsurprising that most maritime safety organisations concentrate more on keeping people out of the water than on dealing with them when they fall in. Fortunately for most people in Britain there are now few moments when we need the sea. In the past, anyone who wanted to earn a livelihood, travel, emigrate, exchange knowledge, conquer the colonies, take their goods to market, work, teach, fight, learn, or survive, had to take a boat. They could not fly or take a train under the Channel. They were stuck, moated by the surrounding oceans. They had no choice but to trust to fate and an adequate captain. Either way you look at it, we are sodden from both above and below, surrounded by ocean and fogged by grey weather. No part of England is more than seventy-five miles away from the sea, and—no matter how far we appear to grow away from it—the sea still shapes our identity, our history and much of our wealth. Dampness is our defining characteristic, and every foreigner that ever read about England knows it as a place of unceasing rain. This is a liquid land, and even those who never go near the sea will ever completely avoid its clammy grip. In recent years, water has begun to creep deeper into our homes and our supposedly storm-proof lives. Whether or not global warming or over-development of the flood plains is the culprit, the waters go on rising, month after month.

  Our relationship with water marks much of our history. We may not be far from our continental neighbours, but we persist in behaving as if we are worlds apart. Even now, the British regard the rest of Europe as a club we would rather not join. Depending on our mood, we can either welcome its invasions (tourists, workers, decent food), or turn our backs to it; more usually, we manage a combination of the two. The distance between Dover and Calais is seventeen miles, but it marks a fathomless distance of difference to us. Our encircling waters have protected us, fed us, enriched us and occasionally trapped us. Anyone with plans to invade France, or Italy, or Spain, had merely to muster an army and march across the mountains, but anyone deluded enough to think of invading Britain pitted themselves against an exquisite set of natural defences: dirty seas, high cliffs, vile weather and a combative population. Thus the only possible attractions for attacking us were either to rob us, or to tame us, or both.

  From our side, we regarded the water as both a challenge and a hazard. Since we were surrounded by it, we had to learn to cross it. Over the centuries we became knowledgeable about our particular patch of ocean, and the understanding made us bold. We sailed further, bought, sold, colonised, stole and appropriated, and then brought our spoils back in triumph across the water. We were rich—disproportionately so, and we came to regard the ocean as both our God-given element and our lake of liquid gold.

  All that imperial loot came at a price, however. According to the Shipwreck Index of the British Isles, published by Lloyd’s Register, and currently the most comprehensive estimate of UK losses, there are between 30,000 and 33,000 known wrecks around the British coastline. Though the figures include both domestic and foreign shipping, the final total is undoubtedly an underestimate. Though the Index has recorded all known ships from the point at which reliable records began to exist, there will be many thousands more vessels which, because they were small, or unregistered, or working illegally, vanished without ever making it safely into the books. Lloyds Register, which began producing annual figures for British and worldwide shipping casualties in the 1880s, only dealt with vessels above 1,000 tons, a statistical benchmark which exempted many smaller fishing vessels and almost all small inshore craft.

  Still, even the figures which do exist make for interesting reading. The areas of England with the greatest numbers of wrecks per mile of coastline, are, perhaps predictably, Norfolk, west Cornwall and the Goodwin Sands (off Kent) with 25.6, 26 and 32 wrecks per mile respectively. Less predictably, the county with by far the worst shipwreck record in the whole of the British Isles is Durham, a small county with only twenty-six miles of coastline. The reasons for its appalling total of 43.8 wrecks per mile lie both in the geography of that coastline, and in its erstwhile economic identity as the home of shipbuilding, coal, and iron. The rivers Tees, Wear and Tyne are all local to Durham and collectively launched more ships than either the Clyde or the Mersey, or indeed any other river in Europe. Beyond the mouths of those rivers, small colliers steamed up and down the east coast with coal for all quarters of the British Isles. In part, the huge numbers of local shipping casualties were due to the volume of seaborne traffic in the area. But they were also due to the curse of the North Sea and the east coast: steep seas and lack of adequate safe harbours. In addition, as the 1836 Shipwreck Committee heard, the shipbuilding standards in the area were often outrageously low, and attempts to improve standards or safety derisory.

  Other parts of Britain were similarly troublesome. Though the Shipwreck Index does not provide county-by-county statistics for Scotland, there is strong evidence that certain coastal areas equalled or even exceeded the worst of England’s totals. In particular, the Pentland Firth and the north-east coast were areas that even skilled navigators avoided if possible. Scotland is effectively governed by three seas: the Atlantic on the west, the North Sea on the east and a combination of the two in the north with a character all of its own. On the west coast, the majority of ships would be coming to or from the Clyde, heading from Glasgow down to western English ports or over to America and Canada. As with County Durham, much of the shipping around the east was local and small scale: fishing vessels, freighters going to and from the Continent, and—later—boats servicing the offshore oil industry around Aberdeen. Shipping round the north included a bit of everything: whaling vessels, East Indiamen dodging blockades further south, American ships heading towards Norway or Sweden, submarines and warships entering or leaving Scapa Flow, fishing trawlers, tankers on their way to Flotta or Sullom Voe.

  But all the figures for Britain combine to emphasise one thing. Though a steady 20 per cent of all shipwrecks were and still are caused by what could be classified as human error—inaccurate charts, insufficient fuel, incompetent crews, drunken captains, absent lookouts, corrupt pilots—the majority of them are caused by what insurance companies still classify as ‘Acts of God’. Passengers could sail on the best-equipped ships with the most experienced captains using the most up-to-date charts; they could choose the safest and best-lit routes; they could personally refuse to put to sea until every last block and tackle had been checked and rechecked; they could vet the captain and dismiss the crew, but if the wind turned or the sea rose, they could still find themselves backing inexorably onto a lee shore or yanked by the currents onto a sandbank or staring upwards into a lump of blue-black sea with their name written on it. And nothing at all, not technology, not skill, not experience and definitely not prayer would ever have saved them from their fate.

  There were and are parts of the British Isles where the sea is inclined to give sailors the benefit of the doubt. But there are also many places where there are no second chances and where the sturdiest ships in the world still sail with trepidation. The distribution of wrecks around our coastline—bone piled upon bone for two millennia or more—tells a tale more eloquent than mere statistics. Some of those ships lie on the sea bed because of mendacious shipowners or sleeping captains; some of them are there because of malfunctioning engines or missed stays. But most of them are there because the sea put them there, and because that sea never did care whether they lived or died.

  ***

  For as long as there have been wrecks, there have been people fighting over them. Wading through the centuries of judgements, precedents, clauses, disputes, definitions and counterclaims in Britain’s courts of law gives the reader the strong impression that the human passion for argument is almost as strong as the human desire to stay afloat. The legislation started with the Greeks, and it is not finished now. In part the arguments have persisted because the sea gives the law some unusual problems. Due to its inconvenient habit of rising and falling twice a day there are considerable difficulties in deciding exactly where
it starts and stops, whether objects in shallow water should be considered submerged or land-bound, and where high- and low-water marks should fairly be drawn. It even took several centuries before the law could make up its mind about exactly what constituted wreck. The legal historian Lord Coke, writing in 1817, defined it thus:

  Flotsam is when a ship is sunk or otherwise perished, and the goods float on the sea. Jetsam is when the ship is in danger of being sunk and, to lighten the ship, the goods are cast into the sea, and afterwards notwithstanding the ship perish. Lagan or ligan is when the goods are so cast into the sea, and afterwards the ship perishes, and the goods are so heavy that they sink to the bottom; and the mariners to the intent to have them again, tie to them a buoy, or cork, or such other thing that will not sink, so that they may find them again.

  ‘Derelict’ is a ship or cargo which has been abandoned by her owners with no hope of recovery or repossession. To clarify things farther, the law states that though a salvaged wreck can sometimes revert to being a ship, a condemned wreck is not a ship but another species of thing entirely.

  But in this abundance of wordage there are some conspicuous absences. While there are plenty of prosecutions for piracy, for plunder and riot, for smuggling or even for stealing wreck from local customs houses, there are very few prosecutions for wrecking itself. The lack of cases provides the most effective argument of those who suggest that the wreckers, like sirens or sea monsters, were no more than a myth dreamed up by outsiders. If, through twenty centuries of law, so few people were accused and so few convicted, then surely it follows that there was no wrecking. Besides, even if it were true that wrecking was often prosecuted under different names, then why, in all those miles and miles of words and deeds and articles, are there no convictions for the crime of showing false lights, and only one known case which even mentions it?

  Oddly enough, the best counter-argument to the sceptics also exists within the law. It is the legislation itself which gives the best indication of the extent of wrecking and the different forms it took. Though there are very few individual cases of wrecking or of showing false lights, there is unquestionably a vast amount of legislation forbidding it. Since monarchs and governments do not usually spend their time inventing non-existent crimes, or lawyers prosecuting non-existent offences, the volume of wordage is startling. So either wrecking existed and was usually prosecuted under different titles, or 2,000 years’ worth of legal scribes have somehow got it wrong.

  In earliest times the sea was regarded as another of the monarch’s chattels, along with countries, money and people. In mediaeval rulings, all salt water was regarded as a subject of the English Crown in the same way that a soldier or a serf would be, and the sea was considered ‘the packhorse of the King’. In 1236, following protests by shipowners, a charter granted by Henry III finally allowed the owner of wrecked goods to reclaim his property, so long as he did so within three months. Crucially, the same charter included a clause stating that if any man or beast escaped alive from a ship, then that ship could not truly be considered a wreck.

  Forty-four years later, Edward I reiterated the same ruling. His version, the First Statute of Westminster, would become notorious. Though the ‘man or beast’ rule was initially inserted to ensure that wreckers did not seize and destroy ships which could have been refloated, in practice it became a permit to murder. As far as any wreckers were concerned, if all that stood between them and £100,000 worth of brandy or silk were a couple of half-drowned midshipmen then they would do everything they could to help those midshipmen to a speedy death. As far as the wreckers were concerned, property came before life, and the law endorsed their view.

  The ‘man or beast’ ruling persisted for many centuries in different forms, and it was not until 1771 that it was finally and explicitly repealed. Even then, its effects lingered on in the common lore of the land. In more remote parts of the country, nineteenth- and even early-twentieth-century wreckers were supposedly drowning their victims according to the old rule.

  In 1266 the Rules of Oleron, drafted by the French but adopted in some form throughout Europe, became Britain’s earliest identifiable form of sea code. Its articles give a faithful account of maritime practices at the time, and a fetishistic account of mediaeval punishments. Article XXV states that corrupt pilots,

  do like faithless and treacherous villains, sometimes even willingly, and out of design to ruin ship and goods, guide and bring her upon the rocks, and then feigning to aid, help and assist the now distressed mariners, are the first in dismembering and pulling the ship to pieces . . . all false and treacherous pilots shall be condemned to suffer a most rigorous and unmerciful death, and high gibbets shall be erected for them in the same place . . . where they so guided and brought any ship or vessel to ruin as aforesaid, and thereon these accursed pilots are with ignominy and much shame to end their days; which said gibbets are to abide and remain to succeeding ages on that place, as a visible caution to other ships that shall afterwards sail thereby.

  Any landowner in league with corrupt pilots was to suffer an equally inventive and time-consuming death:

  If the lord of any place be so barbarous, as not only to permit such inhuman people, but also to maintain and assist them in such villainies, that he may have a share in such wrecks, the said lord shall be apprehended, and all his goods confiscated and sold . . . and himself to be fastened to a post or stake in the midst of his own mansion house, which being fired at the four corners, all shall be burnt together, the walls thereof shall be demolished, the stones pulled down, and the place converted into a market place for the sale only of hogs and swine to all posterity.

  Likewise, Article XXXI states:

  If a ship or other vessels happens to be lost by striking on some shore, and the mariners thinking to save their lives, reach the shore, in hope of help, and instead thereof it happens, as it often does, that in many places they meet with people more barbarous, cruel and inhuman than mad dogs, who to gain their monies, apparel, and other goods, do sometime murder and destroy these poor distressed seamen; in this case, the lord of that country ought to execute justice on such wretches, to punish them as well corporally as pecuniarily, to plunge them in the sea till they be half dead, and then to have them drawn forth out of the sea, and stoned to death.

  The next few centuries saw the gradual shaping and reshaping of the laws governing both salvage and the disposal of wreck. Significantly, the 1410 charter incorporating Trinity House (the lighthouse authority for England and Wales) not only made specific mention of false lights, but cited the wreckers’ activities as one of the reasons for its establishment:

  [All] godly-disposed men, who for the actual suppression of evil-disposed persons bringing ships to destruction by the showing of false beacons, do bind themselves together in the Love of our Lord Christ, in the name of the Master and Fellows of the Trinity Guild to succour from the dangers of the sea all who are beset upon the coasts of England, to feed them when ahungered and athirst, to bind up their wounds and to build and light proper beacons for the guidance of mariners.

  Though the sentiments were noble, Trinity House failed to live up to its own poetry until well into the nineteenth century, preferring to leave the construction of lighthouses to individuals and the collection of light dues to violent legal argument.

  Under an act early in Henry VIII’s reign, the Lord Admiral of England was to appoint vice admirals for each county, who—along with designated lords of the manor—were given rights to all wreck in their areas in return for the submission of annual accounts. The system ultimately proved as open to corruption as the Statute of Westminster, since the vice admirals proved as venal as any wrecker. The preamble to another act in 1713 revealed how lively wrecking remained:

  Whereas great complaints have been made by several merchants, as well Her Majestie’s subjects as foreigners trading to and from this kingdom, that many ships of trade, after all their dangers at sea, escaped, have, unfortunately, near home run on
shore, or been stranded on the coasts thereof; and that such ships have been barbarously plundered by Her Majesty’s subjects, and their cargoes embezzled, and when any part thereof has been saved it has been swallowed up by exorbitant claims for salvage.

  The same act gave customs officers and JPs the power to order the rescue of vessels in distress. For the first time, it also offered official salvage awards as encouragement. Not that legislative bribery seemed to make much difference. Forty years later, the preamble to Act 26, Geo II of 1753 conceded that ‘Notwithstanding the good and salutary laws now in being against plundering and destroying Vessels in Distress, and against taking away shipwrecked, lost or stranded Goods, many wicked enormities had been committed to the disgrace of the nation.’ Crucially, the same act also contained the first explicit legal reference to false lights, explaining that:

  If any person or persons shall plunder, steal, take away, or destroy any goods or merchandise, or other effects, from or belonging to any ship or vessel . . . which shall be in distress or which shall be wrecked, lost, stranded, or cast on shore on any part of his Majestie’s dominions (whether any living creature shall be on board such vessel or not) . . . or shall beat or wound with intent to kill or destroy, or shall otherwise wilfully obstruct the escape of any person endeavouring to save his or her life from such ship or vessel, or the wreck thereof; or if any person or persons shall put out any false light or lights with intent to bring any such ship or vessel into danger, then such person or persons so offending shall be deemed guilty of felony; and on being lawfully convicted thereof shall suffer death as in cases of felony, without benefit of clergy.