The Wreckers by Bella Bathurst

Author:Bella Bathurst [Bathurst, Bella]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I regret to have to report that matters relating to wreck and salvage in those islands [the Hebrides], especially in South Uist and Barra, are as unsatisfactory as they can be. The inhabitants are mostly very poor; they frequently live in huts with their animals and subsist from hand to mouth. They look upon a wreck as a common right, and do not fail to appropriate what they can . . . Some of the highest class, the tenant farmers, are, I learn, but little better than the poorest class in their dealings with wreck. It is true that they proceed in a more indirect manner to obtain any benefits likely to arise from wrecks, but they work towards the one end, of making the most they can. There are no Customs or Coastguard officers in South Uist and Barra: there is only one policeman in Barra, and he works with the inhabitants, and the coast guard cruisers have, so I am informed, only visited the islands three times in ten years . . . From what I have seen, and from what I have heard, I am satisfied that an occasional visit by the coast guard would have a great moral effect. As it is, the people might, so far as the authority of the Board of Trade is concerned, be in Greenland or the Cape of Good Hope. Wrecking in Barra far exceeds anything reported of wrecking in the Bahamas, or anything arising out of the wreck laws of Heligoland.

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