Yo ho ho and a bottle of Jim Beam

January 23, 2007 9:55 PM

What were people who emerged from the cliffs of Cornwall and Dover to steal bounty from wrecked ships in the 1700s called?

It's not smugglers, pirates, scavangers. And there's a bottle of bourbon at stake.

posted by t0astie to grab bag (35 comments total)

privateers?
posted by Rock Steady at 9:58 PM on January 23, 2007

Gleaners?
posted by Methylviolet at 10:00 PM on January 23, 2007

According to this article, it was wreckers.
posted by dilettante at 10:05 PM on January 23, 2007

Google found me wreckers and mooncussers, but apparently it's neither of those.
posted by t0astie at 10:09 PM on January 23, 2007

In news just in, it's not reefers or gleaners either.
posted by t0astie at 10:13 PM on January 23, 2007

Wikipedia , Ethel Smyth, and this page, would seem to indicate they were called "wreckers".
posted by Pinback at 10:15 PM on January 23, 2007

Pickers?
posted by amyms at 10:26 PM on January 23, 2007

Beachcombers?
posted by amyms at 10:30 PM on January 23, 2007

No, not pickers or beachcombers it seems.

I don't think Google will solve this one, sadly.

I need a Cornishman to come forward!
posted by t0astie at 11:03 PM on January 23, 2007

Who is giving you the "no" answers on our guesses?... If it's a friend who has a bottle of bourbon riding on it, how do you know you can trust them to tell you if one of us gets it right? lol
posted by amyms at 11:25 PM on January 23, 2007

The modern distinction seems to be between the legality of salvagers, looters, and wreckers. There have been written lots of laws written to distinguish the first two - does abandoned property (say a ship at sea or a wreck on a coast belong to whoever finds it or to somebody else (like the King or owner)). "Wreckers" basically means a salvager or looter of ship wrecks - though it has taken on the meaning of those who cause shipwrecks so they can be salvaged/looted.

It seems you want the 1700s term for one of these activities. One possibility is reevers though it gives few google hits, and when I've seen it I thought it was derived from "reefer" which might mean someone who hangs around reefs to wait for and glean wrecks.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 11:30 PM on January 23, 2007

I'm absolutely sure it's wreckers. But some people find the idea of being stereotyped as "wreckers" offensive - there are nasty connotations attached to the idea that people went out to purposely wreck ships. So there may be another term that is used, like salvagers or similar.

It still goes on today, by the way. I bet they won't be declaring what they've found to the Receiver of Wreck...
posted by greycap at 11:41 PM on January 23, 2007

In Key West, and other parts of the Caribbean under English flag at various times, they were called "wreckers", and so they are still.

"... Current British wrecking law is wonderfully arcane, requiring that anything found on a wreck or washed ashore, including dead porpoises, be reported to a Receiver of Wreck. Where there were once 80 such receivers, there is now a single official, a civil servant in her early thirties with a background in marine archeology. A person who fails to report his findings will not be penalized because the law does not require reporting within a particular period, and if the receiver left her office and knocked on the door of an offender, he could escape prosecution by contending that he was about to make a report."

posted by paulsc at 12:34 AM on January 24, 2007

Another vote for ‘wreckers:’ that’s the term my Cornish folks always used, anyway.
posted by misteraitch at 12:39 AM on January 24, 2007

wrecking?
posted by bhell13 at 2:31 AM on January 24, 2007

I read an article on wreckers in the 18th century out of the south west (a good one, academic study, can't remember the author) - and they were called wreckers. So who is giving you the "no" answer?
posted by jb at 5:05 AM on January 24, 2007

Cornwall and Dover or Cornwall and Devon?

Uh, add another voice to the general consensus that the answer should most likely be 'wreckers', unless your friend is particularly anti-authoritarian and feels that 'Excise men' is an appropriate answer, or is being irritating and has some Cornish-language word which means 'wreckers'.
posted by Lebannen at 6:02 AM on January 24, 2007

For what it's worth, here are the two definitions of "wrecker" from the OED:

1. One who causes shipwreck, exp. for purposes of plunder by showing luring lights or false signals; a person who makes a business of watching for and plundering wrecked vessels; also, one who wrongfully seizes or appropriates wreck washed ashore.
2. (orignally and chiefly American) A person engaged in salving wrecked or endangered vessels or cargo.

Apparently in American usage, "wrecker" doesn't have quite the same connotation of illegality that it does in England's green and pleasant land.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:27 AM on January 24, 2007

Wreckers.
And I'm a Devonian.
posted by adamvasco at 6:31 AM on January 24, 2007

Moonrakers. Also mentioned in the novel Sarum.
posted by smcniven at 7:11 AM on January 24, 2007

Put us out of our misery soon...
posted by greycap at 12:38 PM on January 24, 2007

Dilantette, T0astie & Pinback are correct - it's "wreckers" that you're thinking of.

Good Lord, has no-one read "The Jamaica Inn" by Daphne du Maurier?
posted by ninazer0 at 1:24 PM on January 24, 2007

The answer is "wrackers" (as in The Shipping News screenplay). From the OED:
One who wrecks, ruins, or subverts.
The term is from 1611.
posted by spock at 4:17 PM on January 24, 2007

Not only did the pirates sail from Watling Island, but they may have practiced "wracking". At night Wrackers would place lights on the reefs and sandbars in such a manner that they enticed passing ships into coming into what they believed to be a safe harbor, only to endup aground and murdered.
via
posted by spock at 4:23 PM on January 24, 2007

For what it's worth, my London-printed 1788 French/English pocket dictionary, with extensive cross-Channel seamens' lingo, has no entry for "reefer," and "wreck" is only used in the destructive sense.
posted by Scram at 4:27 PM on January 24, 2007

on preview, for wrack the 1788 dictionary has a verb translation, "faire naufrage," which seems to mean "to make a shipwreck." Could be!
posted by Scram at 4:31 PM on January 24, 2007

They knew how treacherous their shoals were, and for centuries 'wracking' was a thriving business. Teams of wrackers waited for a signal from a lookout on Gibbs Hill or Wreck Hill that a ship was on the rocks. Then they piled into longboats and rowed like demons to be the first to salvage the abandoned vessel -or, if she was still manned, to offer salvation for a handsome price.
VIA
posted by spock at 5:23 PM on January 24, 2007

Another reference, this time to Cornwall (from an English language forum):

Meanwhile on the rocky southern shores of Celtic Britain, say in the perilous coves of Cornwall where many a ship has foundered-- you have wrackers, people who row out to the not-yet-wrecked ships and rob them of their cargo. Or, as they would have it, the ocean of her bounty.
posted by spock at 7:33 PM on January 24, 2007

Just a note: in the case of words from the 17th & 18th century (or earlier), you can't take a small spelling difference too seriously -- they didn't have standardised spelling, and even the same writer would happily write words in all sorts of ways (I've read "dreyn" and "drain" and "drayne" in the same books; also "Bullingbroke" for "Bollingbrooke", "somme" for "sum", etc).

Unless the word continues to be "wrack" into the 19th or 20th century, and "wreck" was not used for the same meaning, I might think that it was just a variation on "wreck".
posted by jb at 12:34 AM on January 25, 2007

I think I'm the only MeFite in Cornwall and I'm also supporting 'wreckers' as the correct answer. "Back to wrecking, me 'ansomes!" is a sometimes suggested solution to the lack of jobs in the county.
posted by biffa at 3:29 AM on January 25, 2007

I too reckon (sorry) it's wreckers. I went to a talk by the Receiver of Wreck recently. As I understand it, "wreck" is stuff from shipping that ends up beached (see here, and compare flotsam, jetsam, ligan). So "wreckers" aren't people who wreck boats, they're people who remove wreck. (Disclaimer: I'm not Cornish or Devonian, but am coastal.)
posted by paduasoy at 3:19 AM on January 26, 2007

Wreckers (for the nth time)
posted by arcticseal at 10:27 AM on January 28, 2007

Wow! Work kept me from checking for a few days...

The person with the bottle of bourbon is looking for someone to put them out of their misery with a half-remembered word that's just... on the tip of their tongue.

And that word, they are adamant, is not wreckers, wrackers or any variant thereof.

They've also called off the bet in frustration.
posted by t0astie at 1:27 AM on January 29, 2007

What were people who emerged from the cliffs of Cornwall and Dover to steal bounty from wrecked ships in the 1700s last week called?
posted by Rock Steady at 9:31 AM on January 29, 2007

So "wreckers" aren't people who wreck boats, they're people who remove wreck.

I think that's wrong. They were called wreckers as they supposedly would try to draw ships on to rocks so they could clean them out. They would apparently try to do this by setting up lights on shore such that ships would think they were in a place with a beacon they knew the location of, and steer a course based on the false information, potentially leading them on to rocks. The actual evidence that this happened is pretty limited.
posted by biffa at 2:31 AM on May 29, 2007