What happens when strange things wash up on our shores?
All manner of oddities wash up along our coast and every one is the responsibility of the Receiver of Wreck, explains Sonia Zhuravlyova
It’s all too easy for us to forget that we’re inhabiting an island with thousands of miles of coastline and countless coves and inlets. And, each year, some 30,000 objects, worth in the region of £10 million, wash up on our shores.
The monumental task of processing their arrival falls to the governmental official with the colourful job title of Receiver of Wreck.
Britain’s relationship with wreckage goes as far back as man could sail. As salvage was a vital economic source for many communities around the coast, it’s not surprising that tales abound of flashing lamps that would entice ships onto the rocks, only for their precious cargo to be liberated by the locals.
This knavish practice was known as ‘wrecking’ – and so the post of Receiver of Wreck was introduced at the end of the 19th century to keep some order, reward those who could assist, and punish those who wouldn’t.
Although the Receiver of Wreck could, at least in theory, carry a weapon to protect themselves in the line of duty right up to 1997, today the relationship between coastal communities and the Receiver’s office is rather more cordial, if not always followed to the letter.
In 2009, a Russian ship lost more than 1,500 tonnes of timber in high seas, a third of which washed up off the Kent coast. Although the bulk of the beached wood was recovered by contractors, appointed by insurers of the ship, locals did not hang about and some of it ended up as sheds and borders for vegetable patches.
An earlier ‘woodslick’ of washed-up timber in Worthing generated a considerable amount of attention. In her report, the current Receiver of Wreck, Alison Kentuck, wryly noted, ‘Worthing went on to enjoy a winter tourist boom.’
Tempting as it may be to hold on to that Bronze Age blade or 200-year-old casket of rum, those who have discovered an item onshore must report it to the Receiver’s office. Legally, nothing is fair game for treasure hunters, beachcombers or divers exploring historic shipwrecks. Those who do report a discovery may be entitled to a reward or, if no owner comes forward after a year, to keep their loot.
It is up to the Receiver of Wreck to identify the reported item and either reunite it with its owner, place it in a museum – a bronze cannon of the mid-1500s was presented to the Dutch city of Zierikzee in 2015 – or dispose of it entirely.
‘All wrecks belong to someone’ is the ethos of the Receiver.
The reported finds are known as ‘droits’ from the French for ‘right’ – and this is at the heart of the Receiver’s job, to deliver the washed-up goods to their rightful owner.
Officially, wreck is classified in four categories: flotsam describes goods from a ship that has sunk but which are recoverable because they have floated; jetsam is the term for goods that have been cast overboard to lighten a vessel that is in trouble; derelict is property that has been abandoned at sea; and lagan means goods cast overboard but buoyed so they can be recovered later.
And then there are the royal fish, which may find themselves stranded on one of our beaches. Whales, dolphins, porpoises and sturgeons are considered fit exclusively for the royal table – a decree issued by Edward II.
The Queen, however, isn’t always keen on receiving these. In 2004 a large sturgeon was caught off the coast of South Wales but, when the Receiver alerted the Palace, it was communicated that the fisherman could keep it.
The list of declared droits is rather eclectic. They include Viking-era axes, ships’ bells, Moroccan gold coins, leather shoes, wooden statues, a hand-held air-raid siren, an elephant’s tusk, a stash of pink diamonds, and a rare German Dornier bomber, found five miles off the coast of Deal in Kent.
The Dornier, believed to be the only example of its kind, had lain in twenty metres of water for more than seventy years, after being shot down during the Battle of Britain in August 1940. Recovery took seven weeks and the salvage company had to design and build a special lifting cradle. The aircraft was hoisted onto the deck of a barge, where the wings were removed, before it was transported to the RAF Museum, which had sponsored the recovery to the tune of £850,000.
But there are more peculiar finds out there, too. The heads of 200 dolls were recovered from the wreck of the Galatea, lost off the Norfolk coast in 1898. It was travelling from Hamburg to Sydney with general cargo, including children’s toys.
Curiouser still are some things called ‘globsters’, which have puzzled and excited professionals and punters alike. These masses of mangled organic matter, some of which have bones, tentacles or eyes, are found on beaches around the world.
Some consider them evidence of unnamed sea monsters. In all likelihood, they’re the remains of large sharks or sperm wales – just another curio delivered up by the waves to be catalogued and processed by the Receiver of Wreck.