The Maritime History of Cornwall by Philip Payton

Author:Philip Payton [Payton, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780859899604
Publisher: University of Exeter Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Source: Compiled from CRO, AR 15/68. Copies of Court Presentments, 1695–1759, manor of Connerton.

By far the most common items washing ashore were hogsheads of wine and brandy, followed by the paraphernalia of ships’ structure and fittings – the boats, sails, masts, yards, rigging, pumps, ropes, cables, anchors; and cargoes of butter, iron and beer. The presentments reveal that not only were the tenants turning over wrecked items to the bailiff in return for a moiety – 50 per cent – of the value or of the goods, but also that earnings could be substantial compared to their salary as labourers and fishermen, many who earned less than 2s. 6d. a day.6 Salvors were paid 3s. 4d. each for the burial of corpses, including one seaman in 1757, another in 1758, and the bodies of two women and a man in 1759.7 In 1721 a piece of mast and a small topyard was divided between Richard Bennetts, Isaac Carthew and a few others, while the other half of the moiety was retained for the lord of the manor; several casks of brandy salved by Richard Harry and Diggory Hannifer yielded £7 7s. in 1756; and a piece of timber found near Sennen was sold for salvor John Jenkins for 7s. 6d. in 1759. Records from the medieval and early modern period suggest that the custom of dividing the goods was a longstanding one and indicate that the relationship between manorial lords and their tenants over shipwrecked goods was not always adversarial. Indeed, as far back as the fourteenth century goods were divided between the finder and the owner of the wreck rights ‘according to the right and custom of maritime law used in the said county’.8 Hence, the finding of wreck could have major economic significance for the tenants, but it was not to be counted on.

Although the majority of presentments show that wreck was handed over to the steward salvors occasionally appropriated goods ‘for their own use’ or for rival manorial lords. A wreck near St Ives in November 1712 is a case in point. Part of a mast came ashore near Trenaling Cliffs and was salved by Andrew Stephens for the Arundells, the rightful claimant. However, four men, all of the parish of St Ives, ‘came to the place where the mast lay & with force & violence cut it up and carried it away’. St Ives fishermen were able to save five puncheons and one hogshead of white wine for Customs, but another hogshead of white wine that came ashore near Lamorna Cove was ‘seized and carryed away’ by Oliver Hoskyn and other tenants for Sir John St Aubyn, despite Arundell claims to wreck in the cove. A pipe of brandy and a hogshead of wine coming ashore near the St Just cliffs were ‘seized’ by the Gendalls and William Adams and ‘carryed away & converted for their own use & sold & disposed of a great deal afterwards’. A cask of white wine found washing ashore near

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