On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 12:35:45 +0000, Sacha
wrote:
On 28/1/07 11:32, in article , "Janet Tweedy"
wrote:
In article , "Keith (Dorset)"
writes
Wrecking is a time-old tradition whereby coastal dwellers have always
supplemented their often meagre earnings by salvaging items of value from
the shoreline at the time of a wreck.
Here in Dorset, often the whole community would venture out, often in
appalling weather to grab whatever was there for the taking.
Pardon me for my ignorance but I always thought that wreckers were the
murderous little swine who lured ships onto rocks thereby destroying
them and murdering the sailors on board.
It's one thing to salvage stuff from a beach another to deliberately
kill sailors!
Not that I'm condoning the looters but surely they aren't 'wreckers'?
janet
No, they're not wreckers. Your definition is the correct one. Sometimes,
if passengers and crew reached the shore in safety, the wreckers would kill
them to stop them either telling the tale of what happened, or to steal the
jewellery they were wearing.
Er...you have documentary evidence to support this?
I cannot speak for other parts of the country, but as far as Cornwall
is concerned, there is no documentary evidence for the oft-repeated
accusation that ships were lured onto the rocks by wreckers waving
lamps on the shore, tying them to donkeys tails to wander along the
cliff-tops, etc. (See for example: Henderson, Essays in Cornish
History, O.U.P., 1935, pp. 172-179). It's a popular myth that owes
more to Victorian melodrama than fact. It's a moot point whether the
practice would have been very successful anyway. In the days of sail
(which is what we're talking about), lights on land far outnumbered
lights at sea. So a light was something to avoid rather than head for.
In Cornwall, the term 'wreckers' applies to those people who descend
on a wreck and strip it. It is a term still in general use, as is the
activity, given half a chance. If the people said to deliberately lure
ships onto rocks existed, I'm sure they would also be called wreckers.
Whether wreckers also harmed the survivors is less clear. There is
certainly evidence that in some cases survivors would be stripped of
their valuables and even their clothes, and left to fend for
themselves rather than being assisted, but no evidence
AFAIK that they
were actually murdered (see e.g. George Borlase, writing in the
Lanisly letters, 1750 to 1756). But equally, there is plenty of
evidence of heroic efforts being made by the local population to
rescue survivors, often putting their own lives at risk and in some
cases even losing them (see Henderson again, also Noall and Farr,
'Wreck and Rescue Round the Cornish Coast', Truro Bookshop, 1965).
Perhaps things were different in the Channel Isles.
--
Chris
E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net