The Lighthouse Stevensons - Bella Bathurst [18]
More awkwardly, the wreckers could, with some justification, claim salvage from a ship as a legal right. Until 1852 and the Customs Consolidation Act which appointed official Receivers of Wreck, the law remained confused and uneasy, and little could be done to prevent thefts. Previously, all wrecks in British waters came under the jurisdiction of the Lord Admiral whose role was to take ‘cognisance of the death of man, and mayhem done in great ships’, and who delegated responsibility to lord lieutenants in each county. All cargo was divided into four categories: flotsam – cargo that floated; jetsam – jettisoned cargo abandoned by the crew in their attempts to save the ship; ligan – cargo that sank and was marked with a buoy for later retrieval, and wreck – the cargo that was washed ashore. For many years, all four types became the subject of an undignified wrestle between the finder, the landowner, and the Crown. If the rightful owner did not claim his cargo within a year and a day, it was forfeit to the Crown, although the finder was entitled to a reward proportionate to the value of the goods.
Landowners could claim the ‘privilege of right’ to anything washed up on their foreshores. Their tenants then adapted that privilege to suit themselves. Wreckers took advantage of the silences in legislation to justify their lootings either under civil law, or under a shrewd interpretation of divine justice. Eventually, the impasse developed into a very British truce, part opportunism, part Queensberry Rules, and part amateur criminality. With the increase in customs and smuggling patrols during the early nineteenth century, wreckers realised that their safest chance lay in staying within the law; if they came across a stricken ship, they must rescue the crew first, but, having done so, the ship became theirs to plunder or sell as they pleased. The practice still exists to this day; any ship (other than those of the coastguard or RNLI) that assists another ship in distress is entitled to claim a portion of the value of that ship in return for saving the lives of the crew. Given that a captain therefore risks forfeiting his ship, this also gives rise to the reluctance of many crews to issue Mayday calls, even in extremis.
The early wreckers also brought a certain grim ingenuity to their tasks. Many locals in areas in which ships were regularly wrecked did not just wait for disaster; they created it. Luring ships onto the rocks was a particular favourite. The Scilly Isles, the West Country and the Hebrides were all rumoured to have wreckers who put up false lights to guide the mariner onto the rocks. It was easy enough to light a bonfire on a dangerous coastline, or tie a lantern to a horse’s tail so it imitated the swinging of a ship’s light. For a while, the first lighthouses only made the situation worse. The local wreckers, aware that ships relied on the towers to know their position near land, set up rival lights nearby in order to beguile the pilots away from their true course and onto the nearby coast. There were other methods as well. The Wolf Rock, eight miles south-west of Land’s End, was a notorious hazard for shipping, and was regarded by the local Cornish wreckers as an excellent source of plunder. Within the rock, however, there was a cavern hollowed out over centuries by the movement of the tides. When the waves crashed through it, trapping and then releasing the air within, the cavern made a sound eerily similar to a wolf’s howl. The wreckers, worried