In the late eighteenth century villagers in the Scilly Isles prayed, ‘We pray thee, o Lord, not that wrecks should happen,
but that if any wreck should happen Thou wilt guide them into the Scilly Isles for the benefit of the inhabit ants.’ Further
afield, the girls of Tristan da Cunha were somewhat bolder. They prayed, ‘Please, God, send me a wreck that I may marry.’
A wreck was considered a blessing in many isolated coastal communities, such a blessing that the villagers of the West Country
sometimes gave the Almighty a helping hand by luring ships inshore: a lantern tied to a horse or to a cow’s horns on a cliff
top often worked a treat.
Shipwrecks provided rich pickings for the people who lived on the wild coast of Devon and Cornwall. In 1750 a Dutch galleon
carrying wine and brandy was wrecked on Thurlstone Sands, and it was said that as many as ten thousand came from all parts
of Devon to plunder the cargo. They were kept at bay only by the arrival of soldiers from Plymouth, and the drunken leader
of the mob was killed by falling on a solider’s bayonet.
In maritime law a vessel that is driven ashore is not said to be a wreck if any man or domestic animal is still alive aboard
her: and if she isn’t a wreck then her cargo must be restored to her owner. Misunderstanding of this law in days gone by meant
that survivors of shipwrecks were sometimes
murdered by their potential rescuers. Seafarers feared this, and when the steamer
Delaware
went aground in 1871 near the Scillies, two survivors who were about to be rescued by locals had stones in their hands, fearing
that they’d have to fight for their lives. In 1772 the rich cargo of the
Chantiloupe
was plundered when she went ashore in Bigbury Bay in South Devon. One of the survivors, a lady related to the famous Edmund
Burke, was stripped and robbed of her jewels by wreckers from nearby villages. They cut off her fingers to steal her rings
and murdered her, burying her body on the foreshore. In 1900 children digging in the sand discovered another of the wreckers’
victims; a man buried in a shallow grave, probably one of the
Chantiloupe
’s crew.
However, the most gruesome tale of Devon wrecking comes from Clovelly in the north of the county. A family called Gregg were
reputed to have lured ships ashore then robbed, killed, pickled and eaten more than a thousand hapless victims.
But those who sailed the seas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn’t have to contend only with land-based wreckers.
Shipowners sometimes risked their vessels, because if a ship sank they could claim the vessel’s value plus the cost of its
cargo from their insurers. Sometimes worthless cargo would be substituted for the valuable one insured and an owner would
hire a ‘wrecker’, a man who signed on as a member of the crew and sabotaged the ship in a seaway where he was likely to be
rescued.
It wasn’t unknown for women, like Mercy Iddacombe in this book, to be involved in the shipping business. A shipowner from
Bideford called Widow Davie was such an astute businesswoman that she acquired a reputation for being a witch: the sailors
on her ships believed that she knew everything they did, even when they were in port thousands of miles away in Virginia or
Newfoundland.
There are several tales of sealed rooms in Devon – a few complete with skeleton. But I feel I must mention the story
of Chambercombe Manor near Ilfracombe where a secret room containing a skeleton was discovered. The remains were reputed
to be those of a young woman murdered by local wreckers, possibly the daughter of their leader, who left her in the room to
starve.
It was dangerous to go to sea, but it seems that for some life was just as risky on dry land.