PKOFESSIOXAL WRECKING. 



235 



board the wreck. Over ! over with the anchor. It falls on the vessel's deck. All the 

 crew of the vessel are in the mizen shrouds, but they cannot get to the boat : a fearful 

 rush of sea is chasing- over the vessel, and between them and it. Again and again the boat 

 thumps on the wreck as on a rock, with a shock that almost shakes the men from 

 their hold/' The waves carry her off, but the anchor holds, and they manage to haul 

 on board another line. Again and again the boat washes away, but comes up to the 

 vessel again ; and, one by one, ten poor Danes are got on board. One sailor jumps from 

 the rigging; the boat sinks in the trough of the sea, and he falls between her and the 

 wreck; a second, and he would be crushed; two boatmen seize him, and are themselves 

 seized by their companions, or they would go overboard. 



The long battle was over; was it not one worth fighting? So thought the King 

 of Denmark, who sent two hundred rix-dollars to be divided among the men, who 

 were also rewarded by the Board of Trade. The boatmen are poor men, and such presents 

 come in very acceptably ; but their greatest satisfaction must ever come from the memory 

 of their own brave deeds. 



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 Coeur de Lion 

 and his Plnactnicnts The Roles d'Oleron False Pilots and Wicked Lords Stringent Laws of George II. The Home- 

 ward-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 : ft 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 1251 some Winchelsea mariners attacked 

 a Yarmouth vessel, and killed some of her crew. 



