256 THE SEA. 



manlike hero too. The old wreckers made ten times the money, with an infinitesimal 

 proportion of the trouble. 



Yes, times have changed for the better. Individuals may, of course, be found capable 

 of any amount- of brutality for the sake of gain, but the shipwrecked mariner of to-day 

 is morally certain that his life and remaining property are safe when he reaches the shore 

 of any part of the United Kingdom, and that for every ruffian there will be twenty kindly 

 and hospitable people ready to pity and to aid him. The same could not be said of the 

 early part of this very century. It seems almost incredible, too horrible, to be possible, 

 that in 1811 the remnant of a poor crew of a frigate wrecked on the Scotch coast 

 were, after buffeting the breakers and struggling ashore for dear life, absolutely murdered 

 on the beach for the sake of their wretched clothes, or, at all events, stripped and left to 

 die. When morning dawned the beach was found strewn with naked corpses. The 

 inhabitants of many fishing villages and seaside hamlets were open to similar imputations 

 late in the last, and indeed early in the present, century. Whole communities have in 

 bygone times let us trust gone for ever turned out at the tidings of a vessel in danger, 

 solely with a view to plunder. A tolerably well-known yarn, in which, probably, implicit 

 confidence should not be placed, tells us of a wreck which occurred near the village of 

 St. Anthony, Cornwall, one Sunday morning. This being the case, and the parishioners 

 assembling at the church, the clerk announced that " Measter would gee them a holladay/' 

 for purposes on which that excellent clergyman well knew they were intent. This is 

 only one part of the story, for it is stated that as the members of the congregation were 

 hurrying pell-mell from the church, they were stopped by the stentorian voice of the parson, 

 who cried out, " Here ! here ! let's all start fair ! " The fact is that the contents or 

 material of a wreck scattered around a coast were, and, no doubt, are still in many 

 places, looked upon as legitimate prey by fishermen and others who would scorn anything 

 in the form of treachery, in luring the good ship ashore, or in brutal treatment to the survivors 

 of her crew. " Within the past five-and-twenty years/' said a leader-writer a short time 

 since, " it is said that a candidate for Parliamentary honours, while canvassing in a district 

 near the coast, found that his opinion on the subject of wrecking was made a crucial 

 point. Wrecking, indeed so far as the appropriation of shipwrecked property is implied in 

 the word seems to have held very much the same position in popular ethics as smuggling 

 has done. ' Such was the feeling of the wreckers/ writes one who was at one time 

 Commissioner of the Liverpool Police, 'that if a man saw a bale of goods or a barrel 

 floating in the water, he would run almost any risk of his life to touch that article, as a 

 sort of warrant for calling it his own. It is considered such fair game, that if he could 

 touch it he called out to those about him, " That is mine ! " and it would be marked 

 as his, and the others would consider he had a claim to it, and would render him 

 assistance/ " We are told that the natives of Sleswig-Holstein considered wrecking so 

 legitimate that prayers were offered up in their churches at one time that " their coasts 

 might be blessed." Pastor and flock looked upon wrecks as much of blessings as they did 

 a good fishing season. The parson, however, it was explained, did not really pray for 

 wrecks. Certainly not ! What he meant was that if there must be wrecks, those wrecks 

 might happen on their coasts ! 



