The Wreckers: A Story of Killing Seas and Plundered Shipwrecks, from the 18th-Century to the Present Day

by Bella Bathurst

Book Overview

Bella Bathurst's first book, the acclaimed The Lighthouse Stevensons, told the story of Scottish lighthouse construction by the ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson. Now she returns to the sea to search out the darker side of those lights, detailing the secret history of shipwrecks and the predatory scavengers who live off the spoils. Even today, Britain's coastline remains a dangerous place. An island soaked by four separate seas, with shifting...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618416773
• ISBN13: 9780618416776
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The Wreckers

I quite enjoyed this well-written history of wrecking along the coasts of the Bristish Isles. The author did a wonderful job of interviewing some of the elderly folks around the country that were able to supply some of the kind of history (With a few embellishments I'm sure.) that would otherwise be lost forever once they are gone. I also received an unexpected education about the geology of Great Britain and bit of oceanography that was a pleasant addition to the text. I thought the book was entertaining and easy to read. In fact, I've since purchased another copy to give as a gift.

Fascinating Look Into A Little-Known Area

We all know about shipwrecks, but I had never heard of people who make a living off of these tragedies - even whole communities that basically lie in wait for these wrecks to happen - until I stumbled on this book. Bella Bathurst's look into Wreckers is really interesting, though a tad overwritten. Nonetheless, it's totally worth reading. She's particularly good at capturing the personalities of the people involved, as well as giving a great historical overview of this bizarre and fascinating pocket of human life. If you like books about seafaring, this is a great little detour.

Lively Tales of Rocky Seas and Rocky Morals

You are walking along the beach, and you find a box that has obviously washed up from the sea. You look inside, and find something valuable. What do you do? For almost anyone, this is as clear a case of finders keepers as can be. But what if you saw the ship on the rocks from which the box came? What if you rowed out deliberately to take such boxes from the foundering ship? What if in rescuing boxes you refused to rescue passengers? What if you had lured the ship upon the rocks deliberately by making a false lighthouse? The wreckers can tell you the answers to these questions, if you can get any of them to make frank replies. Wreckers are those who are eager to claim soon-to-be-lost cargo as their own, and the history of British wreckers (frank replies and all) is told in _The Wreckers: A Story of Killing Seas and Plundered Shipwrecks, from the 18th Century to the Present Day_ (Houghton Mifflin) by Bella Bathurst. The author's previous book, on the lighthouse-building family of Robert Louis Stevenson, was a sort of preparation for the current one, the light as opposed to the dark. It is full of death, riches, and good and bad luck, and therefore cannot help being fascinating. The complicated legal status of wrecks, wreckers, and wreckage is here covered in detail, but it is fair to say it is not made plain. No English law has supported "finders keepers" in any form, but wreckers pretty much depend upon it. After all, as Bathurst invites us to consider, if a foundering ship has been properly evacuated of all its crew, and it is about to break up with all its goods going to the bottom, what can possibly be wrong with nimble wreckers climbing aboard and plucking whatever they can? It's a different issue from wreckers luring ships to their doom. Go to Cornwall now, the setting for _Jamaica Inn_, and they will sell you souvenirs from the age when wreckers deliberately wrecked ships, and they will deny that such things ever occurred. There is much less malevolence described on most of these pages, although they are full of those who live by the sea and try to profit thereby. If you don't like the dark of _Jamaica Inn_, which may or may not be based on real history, try the rollicking _Whiskey Galore_, which is really based on the sinking of the _Politician_, with a quarter million barrels of malt whisky, wrecked off parched isles of Scotland in 1941. The _Cita_ ran aground on the Isles of Scilly in 1997 and gave the islanders tons of toys, car engines, and brand name Nike trainers. These are fine stories that anyone will enjoy, because wrecks are inherently fascinating. One man who photographs says anyone will go look at them, "Not necessarily to go and pick it over, but just to go and see it. It seems to create an awful lot of interest in people." Just so this book. Bathurst has visited the locales described, and most importantly, has actually sailed these dangerous waters, with expert local guides. Off Scotland, for instan