To get free lumber
Then we wouldn’t have to pay for it….
(Apologies to Brian Wilson and Tony Asher)
A follow up to an earlier post about tons and tons of lumber that fell off a Russian ship bound for Egypt off the coast of Britain. The wood has arrived on the beaches. The scavengers arrived shortly thereafter. A whole bunch of people are getting a whole bunch of free lumber, despite police warnings about taking the planks.
It is hardly the glistening gold and silver booty of a sunken pirate ship.
Nonetheless, scavengers flocked to Kent’s beaches to collect some of the tens of thousands of planks of wood that washed ashore from a Russian cargo ship.
Despite having issued warnings about not picking up the timber, police failed to prevent locals from illegally taking the wood for themselves.
Instead, officers looked on as looters at Ramsgate and Broadstairs helped themselves to as many of the planks as they could carry – and bundled them in waiting vans.
The scenes around Broadstairs had echoes of the large-scale looting when the MSC Napoli ran into trouble off Branscombe, Dorset, in 2007.
The “rule” of “finders keepers” doesn’t actually apply in this situation. Maritime law is a bit more arcane and complicated than that. Nonetheless, looting of washed up cargo has a long, colorful history. And, as one of the pictures accompanying the article shows, the police aren’t about to try to stop the discount lumbering operations. Despite the warnings by authorities, the looters are probably doing a public service by getting the wood off the beaches and out of the ocean. A submerged plank can play havoc with a boat that hits it.
A recurring event in the Icelandic sagas is lawsuits and feuds beginning with rival claims to driftwood. Wood was extremely scarce and expensive in medieval Iceland, and there were very specific laws concerning who had rights to it.