“Then I will ask one thing,” he said; “give the captain another ship.”
The agent hesitated, and then said that what he asked was an impossibility. The firm had no other ships which were not then provided with captains. They could not, in justice, displace one of them, to instal in his room the captain of the wrecked ship.
“Never mind,” said Mr. Hawker; “this is the only thing I have asked of you, and this is refused me.”
A few days after, the agent came to him to inform him that the firm purposed laying the keel of a new vessel, and that the captain for whom he pleaded should be appointed to her.
The ship was built, and was baptised Morwenna. She now sails to and fro along this coast, and, whenever she passes Morwenstow, runs up a flag, as a mark of deference to the spot whence she derives her name.
The flotsam and jetsam of a wreck are the property of the Crown. The coast-guard are on the qui-vive after a storm, and there is no chance now for village wreckers. They may carry off small articles, which they can put in their pockets; but so many have been had up of late years before the magistrates, and fined, that the officers of government have it nearly all to themselves. When, however, a keg of brandy is washed ashore, the villagers go down to the beach with bottles, break in the head of the cask, and fill their bottles. Should a coast-guard officer appear, the keg is kicked over, and they make off with their liquor. The bottles are sometimes kept in a cave, or hidden in the sand, and removed at night. The coast-guardsmen may suspect that the head of the cask was stove in purposely, but cannot prove it. When the shore is strewn with articles, an auction is held on the spot. The farmers are the principal buyers, and they get the goods very cheap. They have their donkeys at hand, to remove up the cliffs what they have purchased. The expense of transport prevents others at a distance from entering into competition with them.
After all has been sold, portions of the beach are let by auction for a week or fortnight; and those who take the beach are entitled to claim, as their own, whatever is thrown up by the sea during their tenure. A wreck does not come ashore at once, but by instalments; nor always at one place, but all along the coast.
Should there not be sufficient articles found by the coast-guard to make it worth their while to call in an auctioneer, they hold an auction of their own; but, not being licensed, they cannot run the price of the articles up, they therefore run them down. For instance, a piece of wood comes ashore, worth, may be, half a crown. The coast-guard offers it for ten shillings; and, if no one will give that for it, it is offered for nine, then eight, and so on, after the manner of a cheap-jack.
I had got as far as this in my memoir on Saturday night, 13th Nov., 1875. On the following morning I went to Morwenstow, to take duty in the church. The wind was blowing a hurricane from the south-west. I had to hold on to the grave-stones, to drag myself through the churchyard in the teeth of the storm, to the church porch.
There were few present that morning. No woman could have faced the wind. The roar of the ocean, the howling of the blast, the clatter of the glass in the windows, united, formed such a volume of sound that I had to shout my loudest to be heard when reading the service.