OLD LAWS ON WRECKING. 237 



Prior to the reign of Henry I. all wrecked property belonged to the king 1 . 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 dis- 

 persed 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 Coeur de Lion, always truly chivalrous, would have nought to do with plun- 

 dering 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 " Roles 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 pro- 

 mulgated 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 ship- 

 wrecked 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 (prin- 

 cipally for the owners !), to be persuaded that he had not the means to make good the losa 

 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 ship- 

 wrecked, 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 



