The cover of this book illustrates the confusion of the wrecking images. A ship drifts helplessly toward the rocky shore and on the cliffs a light shines from a handheld lantern. Was the ship deliberately lured there, or are these more helpers making their way to join the throng already on the beach? The outstretched arms of the people on the sands could be saviors or wreck scavengers. Such is the power of the wrecker in popular imagination, underlined by fiction and journalism. This book is a welcome publication that provides a long needed scholarly examination of the pervasive wrecking stereotypes, a stereotype that seems to have firmly attached itself to Cornwall.
Cathryn Pearce has delved deep into the original records to get behind the wrecking myths to reveal a more complex and interwoven reality, a reality as she puts it, “that was in desperate need of salvage” (214). She provides useful definitions of wrecking and sets out three categories: attack and plunder of a vessel, which might be deliberate or opportunistic; the “harvesting” of goods from a wreck; and the beachcombing activity, which involves taking goods that washed ashore. These provide an essential guide through the book as she seeks to untwine the folktales and examine the evidence.
Strangely, despite its reputation, Cornwall was not the worst coast for wrecks. This dubious honor was held by County Durham. Mining was a key occupation that employed a third of the Cornish populace in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it is the miners who were often blamed for the wilder scenes relating to wrecking. Much of the populace lived in small rural and coastal communities, and the complexities of the small communities are demonstrated. But while mention is made of the remoteness of Cornwall, it would have been useful here to consider the recent historical views of the impact of periphery on Cornwall and its remoteness from London.
The law relating to the right of wreck, or the attempts to settle the disputed rights and conflicting claims to the wreck, has a long history. Pearce traces how the emphasis changed during the medieval period from the rights of the Lords of the Manor, on whose shores the wreck had arrived, to the rights of the survivors and the proprietary owners of both ship and cargo. With the change of emphasis came the recognition of recompense in the form of the right of salvage and the claim to a moiety of its value. It was in the eighteenth century with a growing merchant class that wreck law was strengthened and attempts were made to criminalize wrecking. Parliamentary debate was split between those who called for the severest penalties and those who felt that local enforcement was sufficient. By the early nineteenth century, prevention rather than harsh punishment was preferred.
Wrecking, smuggling, and poaching have been dubbed “social crimes”; crimes that had the support of all levels of the local community and are seen as victimless. Pearce suggests that “Wrecking as harvest” was a “tolerated illegality” and, as an opportunistic activity, was less frowned on than the more organized and widespread smuggling (95). Assistance in saving lives and ships, often at great risk to the helpers, became conflated with the laws of salvage that entitled the salvager to a percentage of its value. Helping oneself to some wrecked goods was seen as a moral entitlement. This coexistence of wrecking and lifesaving led to many contradictory images.
The relationship between the Lords of the Manor and their tenants regarding the rights of wreck are described as “interdependent and reciprocal” (149). The role of the manorial steward was critical in managing the relationship so that wrecked goods were delivered to the manorial court. The system began to weaken in the nineteenth century in the face of a reinvigorated Customs organization, the ascendancy of the Board of Trade, and a Duchy of Cornwall determined to strengthen its rights. In the face of greater government intervention and changing policy, traditional rights of Lords of the Manor were sold to the Board of Trade or Duchy. This move was encouraged by declining income as only occasionally were wreck rights profitable once expenses and salvage payments were taken into account. The authorities often had a problem in suing wreckers who either were too poor to exact damages or had already disposed of the goods. Local discretion on the part of the authorities was frequent. These contradictions between local practices and the much harsher statutory law inadvertently allowed local beliefs in the right to harvest to become ingrained.
Sensationalist reporting by the media and the tone of comments by clergy are key factors in the mythology of wreckers. Two West country parsons, Hawker and Baring Gould, like many of their contemporaries collected and invented folktales. Pearce shows how uncritical uses of these two sources, together with moralistic tales from Methodist writers, have solidified the myth. Contemporary newspapers were highly variable in their reporting of wreck activity from hostile to neutral to total disregard. But lurid stories of crime enticed the readership, and so the wrecker was demonized in reports, and no distinction was made between harvesting and plundering. Yet the details behind the newspaper reports often tell a more nuanced and far less lurid picture.
Deliberate wrecking with the aid of false lights is mentioned on several occasions in various chapters, and Pearce fails to find any hard evidence, although it would have been useful to have a more detailed focus on this most persistent of images. Wrecking it would seem was, on the whole, a matter of opportunity. Pearce set out to provide a “corrective” to the pervasive myths of wrecking and is to be congratulated for shining a strong light on centuries of confusion. This book is welcome, but, such is the strength of the myth, it is unlikely to make strong inroads in changing popular perception. However, historians now have the facts with which to begin the rebuttals.
