SALVAGE. 



257 



The question of "salvage" is of a nature too technical for these columns. In 

 some minor matters it would seem that the authorities do not offer proper encourage- 

 ment to fishermen and others to be decently honest or humane. At the period of the 

 wreck of the Schiller, on the Scilly Islands, a correspondent of our leading journal* 

 tells us " that many floating bodies of drowned passengers and seamen were picked up 

 by the fishing boats which abound in that part of Cornwall. Upon some of them 

 money or valuables were found, and these were given up to the Customs when the body 

 was sent ashore. In such cases the valuables were retained for the friends of the drowned 



RONAYNE S BRAVERY. 



persons, and a uniform reward of five shillings was paid to the finders. Now, for the 

 sake of taking ashore such a body as I have described, the fishermen seven or eight 

 in number would have lost their night's fishing, for it would not have been safe, even 

 if the crew were willing, to have done otherwise. The smallness of the reward given in 

 return for the services rendered would therefore operate as a strong inducement to the 

 more selfish among them to prefer their fishing to the dictates of humanity. My informants 

 even told a story of a fishing boat which picked up a floating body, and, having col- 

 lected all the papers and valuables from it, restored the body itself to the deep, and went 

 on its way. The papers and valuables were given up in due course, and no charge of 

 dishonesty was preferred against the crew ; but the want of humanity caused (and not 

 unnaturally) a strong feeling of indignation against the perpetrators of this act. The 

 fishermen, however, argued that if they brought the bodies into port (as they were 



* The Times, January 6th, 1876. 



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