| CLASSIC DIVE BOOKS
Wreckers
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| They were fascinating people
- maybe not 'nice' people but even that is debateable. The wreckers plundered
the ships that were unfortunate to go up on the rocks, taking anything
of use from coal to cargo lumber, general cargo and ship's fittings - anything
that coul;d be of use. Considering their general poverty, who could blamee
them. For some it was a way of life - not just of living but of life, for
without the occasional illegal salvage they would not survive, But did
they lure ships to their untimely end? Did they place false lights on the
shore to confuse the masters? Researchers are told by the local descendants
of those living in 'wreck prone' regions that this would never happen -
but research shows otherwise. And even if a ship was wrecked without the
aid of any resident on land, what was the priority of the wreckers - to
save life or to salvage property. Such was their inhumanity - in some cases
- such was their desperation and destitution that it was property before
life, and indeed, many a sailor and passenger who struggled to shore clinging
to a thin thread of life was summarily dismissed by a heavy hand on the
head in shallow waters.
I have always been fascinated by wreckers as I could not conceive how callous they could be. But was this opinion based on ignorance? How much do we know of what really went on in the past centuries, in remote coastlines where the locals struggled with their subsistence living. I was somewhat aware of our own wreckers not to far south of here, in the eastern islands of Bass Strait, that narrow strip of land between Tasmania and mainland Australia. Whatever happened to the 243 ton Britomart, a three-masted barque which disappeared without trace in December 1939 after departing Melbourne for Hobart. We will never know. There is a dearth of literature on deliberate wrecking on our Australian coastline, but not so in other parts of the world. But Australia shares the guilt of all other nations in plundering and scavaging whatever came ashore from a 'natural' shipwreck. This is well documented in the many books on shipwrecks. I'll try to gather here any books that come to my attention specifically on wrecking. I should add that the term 'wrecking' encompasses not so much in activity as deliberately luring a ship to shore, but in the 'salvaging' for personal use anything that may arrive on the shore, or indeed, remain on or of the ship. In the present day, or at least recently before historic shipowreck legislation was introduced, that included recreational wrecks divers who took the odd souvenir or two. Meanwhile at the other
end of the country, the Cornish were supposed to be such accomplished wreckers
that they regarded it not as a crime but as a profession. In fact, if anyone
knew anything at all about the subject, they knew that the Cornish had
been wreckers since birth. The only people who did not know this were the
Cornish themselves, who swore blind that they had been the victims of a
terrible slander and would never have touched a ship in distress. Elsewhere
things were just as bad. From all around Britain I started finding stories
of people deliberately drowning shipwreck victims, stories of shoreline
orgies so dionysian that few participants survived until morning and stories
of wreckers burning the boats of Excise men. There were stories of grand
pianos sitting unplayed in hovels, of crofts fitted with silver candelabra,
and - more recently - of an entire island dresSed in suspiciously identical
shirts. There were stories of false'lights and false foghorns, false harbours,
false rescuers, ,false 'dawns; even stories of entire coastlines rigged
meticulously as stage sets.
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