Smash hit

Between the islands of Jura and Scarba in the Hebrides, for example, is the second largest whirlpool in the world. It is considered one of the “great maritime dragons”, and indeed deserves a place beside Edgar Allen Poe’s evocation of the maelstrom off the coast of Norway. The association is an apt one because this whirlpool, known as Corrievreckan, is a place of extremity, of legendary waters and of monstrous rocks. It is the denizen of a deep subaquatic pit, reaching 219 metres (700ft) below the seabed and known as “the Gateway to Hell”. One description noted that “at the distance of 12 miles a most dreadful noise, as if all the infernal powers had been let loose, is heard”. The water around it finds different levels; a captain can be moving across the smooth surface of the sea, only to observe a great pit opening out before him. This is the alien sea of legend.

But if Poe’s A Descent into the Maelstrom is one aspect of the mystery, an altogether more accommodating note is struck in Compton Mackenzie’s account of island wrecking in Whisky Galore. This story, of a large consignment of whisky being salvaged and drunk by the thirsty locals, is based on a real incident. The SS Politician came to grief on a reef by the island of Barra. In one of its holds were 264,000 bottles of the finest malt whisky. The news soon spread, and it seems that most of the islanders managed to remain drunk for weeks. Cases were hidden in pools or down rabbit-holes. People came in boats from the mainland to take part in the unanticipated festivities.

There have been less gleeful wreckings. Off the Cheshire coast the body of a sea captain was recovered. It had been “stripped of everything”, and after his body was brought on shore “his finger was cut off to secure his ring”. Along the same shoreline “the body of a female was washed on shore, when a woman at Moreton (a nearby village) was proved to have bitten off the ears to obtain the earrings”.

It was said of the Cornish wreckers that they would construct elaborate panoramas in order to coax ships upon the local rocks, but according to Bathurst present-day Cornishmen deny that their ancestors ever knowingly lured ships to destruction. If there is a certain element of guilt about the practice, however, it must be of recent origin. The natives of Cornwall have always been known for their interest in the unfortunate accidents of the sea. The stories were relayed in entertaining form by Daphne du Maurier, in Jamaica Inn, and they have remained ever since.

The stories have survived because they touch a fact of human nature. Proximity and prolonged exposure to the sea can render people cruel. It can also make them unthinking. To live beside its remorseless movement, to become accustomed to its inhuman vastness, brings a little vacancy into the heart. It also encourages fatalism — almost a nonchalance about human life — that must affect the conduct of those who inhabit the coastal regions. It has often been asserted that locality, the spirit of place or genius loci, can affect human behaviour. This book is evidence of this salient fact, in the most striking and memorable ways.

The Wreckers, by Bella Bathurst (HarperCollins, £16.99; offer £15.30 from 0870 1608080)

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