Wreckers

[John Arton]

BBC4 last night had a interesting program about the supposed practice of wrecking, where lamps were lighted along the shore to lure ships onto the rocks so as the locals could snatch the cargo. Salvage law in the 1700 hundreds said that if no one man,dog or any other animal came ashore alive from a ship wreck then it's cargo could be lawfully taken. This led to the myth that the wreckers would murder any survivor of a ship wreck who had survived. The story of wreckers is just that, a story. There are recorded incidents of locals helping themselves to cargo from wrecked ships, especially in places such as the Goodwin sands and on an island in the pentland firth where the lure of earning some money from selling any bit of cargo or ships fittings such as canvas, rope or timber took precedence over saving life but there is no record of any ship ever been deliberately lured into rocks. Indeed in Cornwall, which was supposedly where the myth started (most likely after the publication of the novel Jamaica Inn) there is only one record of anyone being done for helping themselves to anything from a ship wreck and this was of a young man hanged for taking rope from a ship wreck. The program started with scenes of locals helping themselves to the contents of containers ashore from the MSC Napoli in Devon and the Sita on the Scilly isles.
It was only in the late 1800 hundreds that salvage law changed so that saving life took precedence over saving cargo.
Most interesting program followed by a rerun of the program showing the dry docking of the "Pride of Bruges" in Hebburn.
Rgds
J.A.

[happy daze john in oz]

Thanks for that bit of info John.

Back in about 2014 a container ship ran aground close to Tauranga in NZ.
From what I saw of it the locals had a filed day taking all they could find in the open containers.

I understand the NZ gov put out a warning about looting but it made little difference to those helping them selves.