Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures, Maps and Tables
- Dedication
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: A Reputation for Wrecking
- 1 Cornwall and the Sea
- 2 ‘Dead Wrecks’ and the Foundation of Wreck Law
- 3 Wrecking and Criminality
- 4 The Cornish Wrecker
- 5 Wrecking and Popular Morality
- 6 Wrecking and Enforcement of the Law
- 7 Lords of the Manor and their Right of Wreck
- 8 Wrecking and Centralised Authority
- 9 The Wrecker, the Press, and the Pulpit
- Conclusion: Myths and Reputations Reconsidered
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - ‘Dead Wrecks’ and the Foundation of Wreck Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 April 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures, Maps and Tables
- Dedication
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: A Reputation for Wrecking
- 1 Cornwall and the Sea
- 2 ‘Dead Wrecks’ and the Foundation of Wreck Law
- 3 Wrecking and Criminality
- 4 The Cornish Wrecker
- 5 Wrecking and Popular Morality
- 6 Wrecking and Enforcement of the Law
- 7 Lords of the Manor and their Right of Wreck
- 8 Wrecking and Centralised Authority
- 9 The Wrecker, the Press, and the Pulpit
- Conclusion: Myths and Reputations Reconsidered
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
where a man, a Dog or a Cat escape quick out of a Ship, that such Ship nor Barge, nor any Thing within them, shall be adjudged wreck
Statute of Westminster (1275)The news reports from the wreck of the Kodima in 2002 show us that even in the twenty-first century, people still believe in the precept of ‘finders keepers’ when it comes to items found on the beach. Indeed, this is one of the core tenets of wrecking – people believe they have the right to goods that have washed ashore – that it was a ‘custom’ practised ‘from time immemorial’. In the mid-nineteenth century, David Williams, the Coastguard's Inspecting Commander at Padstow, testified during the Select Committee on Shipwrecks that the ‘country people’ called shipwrecked goods a ‘godsend’. He defended them emphatically: ‘they were not thieves’; they would only take objects that had been thrown upon the shore. His opinion was echoed by John Bulley, commanding officer on the Isle of Wight, who reported that the wreckers told him that: ‘“We considered it a right when those things come on shore to take home what we can get.”‘ He added: ‘They do not call it stealing.’ What is so remarkable is that this belief has persisted into the twenty-first century in the face of almost a thousand years of legislation to the contrary. This is not all. Existing side-by-side with the belief in ‘godsend’ or ‘providence’ is another belief, more rooted in law – that of the claim to ‘dead wrecks’, meaning wrecks in which there were no survivors. The claim to ‘dead wrecks’ became the root of one of the persistent myths of Cornish wrecking: that wreckers would murder any survivors to ensure those claims.
How could the popular conviction be maintained, if, as it has been argued, the belief ‘in the legitimacy of appropriating wreck goods has no basis in fact’, that ‘the legal position was clear’? To make matters even more complex and contradictory, as late as the nineteenth century common people also recognised their manorial lords’ rights to claim wreck according to feudal law. Thus popular belief shows shifting perceptions of wreck rights; those perceptions were multiple and simultaneous and were not always in accordance with the law. And yet, beliefs also reflected accommodation to some facets of the law.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cornish Wrecking, 1700–1860Reality and Popular Myth, pp. 41 - 59Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010