Do fundo do mar... Sea bottom
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Uncovering tales of sea plunder
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icNewcastle
By Peter Dundy
April 12, 2005
The Wreckers: A Story of Killing Seas, False Lights and Plundered Ships by Bella Bathurst (HarperCollins, £16.99)
This is one of the most delightful and charming books I've read for a long time.
Beautifully written and highly informative, it corrects many delusions and prejudices as well as showing us how deep-seated is the lust for plunder - for that, after all, is what most wrecks and wreckers were about.
The wreck with which most people are familiar is undoubtedly that in the film Whisky Galore about which arguments still rage, at least in the Hebrides.
But then a fine shipwreck has always represented - for those prepared to take a risk or several - sport, pleasure, treasure and the opportunity to raise one's standard of living. Cornishmen may have been the most notorious of all wreckers around the British Isles, but all coastal communities regarded the sea's bounty as a ready-made means of providing them with anything from grapefruits to grand pianos.
Some plunderers were so skilled that they could strip a ship from stern to stern before the Coastguard even left port.
Some lured ships on to the rocks with false lights, others waited for winter's storms to do the dirty work. Bella Bathurst has traversed the seas around Britain to uncover stories of shipwrecks and the orgies of plunder that often followed. Among the resulting incongruities was the sight of silver candelabra gracing little crofts of coastal Scotland.
____
www.dofundodomar.blogspot.com
icNewcastle
By Peter Dundy
April 12, 2005
The Wreckers: A Story of Killing Seas, False Lights and Plundered Ships by Bella Bathurst (HarperCollins, £16.99)
This is one of the most delightful and charming books I've read for a long time.
Beautifully written and highly informative, it corrects many delusions and prejudices as well as showing us how deep-seated is the lust for plunder - for that, after all, is what most wrecks and wreckers were about.
The wreck with which most people are familiar is undoubtedly that in the film Whisky Galore about which arguments still rage, at least in the Hebrides.
But then a fine shipwreck has always represented - for those prepared to take a risk or several - sport, pleasure, treasure and the opportunity to raise one's standard of living. Cornishmen may have been the most notorious of all wreckers around the British Isles, but all coastal communities regarded the sea's bounty as a ready-made means of providing them with anything from grapefruits to grand pianos.
Some plunderers were so skilled that they could strip a ship from stern to stern before the Coastguard even left port.
Some lured ships on to the rocks with false lights, others waited for winter's storms to do the dirty work. Bella Bathurst has traversed the seas around Britain to uncover stories of shipwrecks and the orgies of plunder that often followed. Among the resulting incongruities was the sight of silver candelabra gracing little crofts of coastal Scotland.
____
www.dofundodomar.blogspot.com
