CHAPTER XVIII.
“Wrecking” as a Profession.
Probable Fate of a rich Vessel in the Middle Ages—Maritime Laws of the Period—The King’s Privileges—Cœur de Lion and his Enactments—The Rôles d’Oleron—False Pilots and Wicked Lords—Stringent Laws of George II.—The Homeward-bound Vessel—Plotting Wreckers—Lured Ashore—“Dead Men Tell no Tales”—A Series of Facts—Brutality to a Captain and his Wife—Fate of a Plunderer—Defence of a Ship against Hundreds of Wreckers—Another Example—Ship Boarded by Peasantry—Police Attacked by Thousands—Cavalry Charge the Wreckers—Hundreds of Drunken Plunderers—A Curious Tract of the Last Century—A Professional Wrecker’s Arguments—A Candid Bahama Pilot.
The great historian, Hallam, says: “In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a rich vessel was never secure from attack, and neither restitution nor punishment of the criminals was to be obtained from Government, who sometimes feared the plunderer, and sometimes connived at the offence.” As we have seen before, some of the greatest names of the Elizabethan and later days were often not much better than legalised pirates. But the poor sailors and owners were not merely the prey of these sea wolves; there were then and for centuries afterwards, nearly to our own days, “land-rats” ashore, who were to the pirates what sneak-thieves were to the highwaymen of romance. Those “good old days,” when “wrecking” was considered a legitimate pursuit!
In preceding chapters the maritime laws and customs of successive ages have been briefly traced. Piracy was almost openly recognised in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and a foreign ship with a rich cargo was too often regarded as rightful prey. There was a constant petty warfare between maritime nations, and frequently even between towns of the same nation. Thus, in the year 1254 some Winchelsea mariners attacked a Yarmouth vessel, and killed some of her crew.
Prior to the reign of Henry I. all wrecked property belonged to the king. Whether it was found necessary to make the king the owner of wreckage, in order to lessen the temptation to wreck vessels and murder the crews—no unfrequent occurrence, even in the last century—or “however it was,” says Gilmore, “the law existed, and the shipwrecked merchant might come struggling ashore upon a broken spar, and find the coast strewn with scattered but still valuable goods so lately his, but now by law his no longer any more than they belonged to the half-dozen rude fishermen who stood watching the torn wreck and dispersed cargo being wave-lifted high upon the beach.” Henry I. decreed that neither wreck nor cargo should become the property of the Crown if any man of the crew escaped with life to shore. It is to be feared that this well-meant law led to many a heartless murder. His successor expanded the law to the extent that if even a beast came ashore alive, the wreck and goods should belong to the original owners. Even the proverbial cat with nine lives might thus save a vessel.
Richard Cœur de Lion, always truly chivalrous, would have nought to do with plundering the plundered, and he decreed “that all persons escaping alive from a wreck should retain their goods; that wreck or wreckage should only be considered the property of the king when neither an owner nor the heir of a late owner could be found for it.” Some authorities will not couple the name of Richard with the “Rôles d’Oleron,” but it is certain that they were first promulgated in or about his time. They afford us some idea of the terrible system of wrecking then prevalent; such laws would not have been promulgated without good reason. Note their stringency.
“An accursed custom prevailing in some parts; inasmuch as a third or fourth part of the wrecks that come ashore belong to the lord of the manor where the wrecks take place, and that pilots, for profit from these lords and from the wrecks, like faithless and treacherous villains, do purposely run the ships under their care upon the rocks,” the law declares “that all false pilots shall suffer a most rigorous and merciless death, and be hung on high gibbets;” while “the wicked lords are to be tied to a post in the middle of their own houses, which shall be set on fire at all four corners, and burnt, with all that shall be therein, the goods being first confiscated for the benefit of the persons injured, and the site of the houses shall be converted into places for the sale of hogs and swine.” And again, “If people, more barbarous, cruel, and inhuman than mad dogs, murdered shipwrecked folk, they were to be plunged into the sea until half dead, and then drawn out and stoned to death.” The pilot who negligently caused shipwreck was to make good the losses or lose his head; but the master and sailors were, as a saving clause (principally for the owners!), to be persuaded that he had not the means to make good the loss before they cut off his head.
And so, without much change, the laws stood till the reign of George II.; and, alas! it does not seem that human nature, on our coasts at least, had greatly improved, for otherwise there would hardly have been necessity for a new Act, bristling with threats. The preamble states:—“That notwithstanding the good and salutary laws now in being against plundering and destroying vessels in distress, and against taking away shipwrecked, lost, and stranded goods, that still many wicked enormities had been committed, to the disgrace of the nation;” and it was therefore enacted that death should be the [pg 238]punishment for hanging out false lights to lure vessels to their destruction; death for those who killed shipwrecked persons; and death for stealing cargo or wreckage, whether any one on board remained alive or not.
Every now and again some fearful tragedy, reported in our ever-vigilant press, opens our eyes to the possibilities of human degradation and depravity; but, in spite of all, thank God! these examples are few and far between. Does this not tend, at least, to show that the world now-a-days is better and kinder, and, in a word, more Christian-like, than in former days? Let the reader think—aye, and ponder, and think again—over the preceding paragraph. Could men—aye, and women too—assist not merely in robbery and plunder, but in first causing the wreck, and then, to cover up all, in murdering the few poor survivors? A writer from whom we have already quoted says:—