to induce citizen juries to convict salvors for collusion "except under circumstances of very rare occurrence and very peculiar character." Considering all, it can be said that the hope of immunity exceeded the fear of having to account to the public authorities, that encouragement rather than discouragement was lent to those who were weak in the face of temptation, and that a wide door was open for the commission of any excess that occasion might suggest.

III

These casualties resulted in bringing into the Bahamas considerable quantities of valuable goods. In 1840 it was reported. that salved goods had filled the small warehousing space at Nassau. Infraction of the imperial laws of trade by the illicit disposal of goods so imported incited Governor Francis Cockburn to protest to London against the laxity in the customs department. But wrecking did not grow great until after the change in the navigation laws. For the year 1852, however, the imports due to wrecks were valued in customs at £46,515, a third of the total imports for the year, and nearly three times the corresponding figure for 1850. Again they were doubled by 1856, reaching a total of $96,304, or 50.8 per cent of the imports for that year. Reference to the table shows fluctuations mostly downward, until a new high mark was reached at £103,890 in 1860, or 43 per cent of the imports for that year, and for the five-year period ending that year 40.5 per cent of all the imports.5 But in the following year the disturbance of

' House Votes, 1858, app., p. 50, and 1857, p. 24, and cf. statute of 11 Vic., cap. 24, sec. 9. In a Blue Book report Governor Bayley wrote: "while foreign shipmasters and native wreckers have a mutual understanding and both are supported by colonial jurors..." Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1860, vol. xliv, p. 13.

* House Votes, 1840, p. 126.

Desp. to Glenelg, no. 19 (1839). Cf. loc. cit., no. 108 (1838).

Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1852-53, vol. lxii, p. 45. The amount £16,768, if correct for the imports of wrecked goods for 1850, probably represents a low point in fluctuations in quantity.

With this compare the account of wrecking in the islands given in the Merchants' Magazine, vol. xliv, p. 53. There it is stated that sixteen vessels ranging from 145 tons to 1000 tons each were wrecked in the interval, that their aggregate tonnage

the American Civil War with its blockade-running and unprecedented business activity for Nassau effected a reduction which held on, until in 1865 the imports of salved goods amounted to but 27.2 per cent of those of 1860. Now, although there was an apparent return to a normal course of development in that 32 per cent and 30.3 per cent of all imports to the colony arose from this source in 1866 and 1867 respectively, and in the culmination at 54 per cent in 1870, it appears that the diversion of energy from salving by the American war was one of the causes of the decline of the salving business, and as such it is to be later treated. After 1870 occurred first a rapid, then a gradual, decline, until within two decades the annual return of imports of salved goods became a mere nominal figure in the lists. For 1896 but £2164 were reported, and for 1903 only £94. Until a new balance between imports and exports had been reached there was likewise in both their columns a sensible decline, which finds its explanation in the change just noted.3

Salved goods paid duty in customs, thereby contributing materially to the public revenues, and after adjudication reëntered the channels of trade. As they frequently sold at a low figure, such parts of them as found local demand contributed to the support of the people at small cost to themselves. In 1838-40 the local market had been glutted and merchants'

was 5150 tons, that the aggregate value of vessels, cargoes and freights was $700,000, of which $475,000 was sacrificed, $125,000 appropriated to the salvors, and a pittance of $100,000, about 14.3 per cent, left to the original owners.

1 Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1862, vol. xxxvi, p. 19. In this report on the Blue Book Mr. C. R. Nesbitt, administrator, said: "The interruption of commerce... and the blockade of the Southern States have paralyzed the avocation of wreckers.'

2

* Infra, p. 643. In several reports after that time the governors seemed to treat salving as a declining source of gain. Cf. Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1867, vol. xlviii, pp. 32-33, 1867-68, vol. xlviii, pp. 31-32, 1868-69, vol. xliii, p. 41. But in the report for 1869, loc. cit., 1871, vol. xlvii, p. 56, a doubt was expressed. 3 Loc. cit., 1874, vol. xliv, p. 66.

In 1850 the customs rate was 15 per cent ad valorem on valuation ascertained at auction sale. Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1850, vol. xxxvi, p. 146. In 1857, it was said, a fourth of the revenues came from this source. House Votes, 1857, pp. 2526. Cf. Nassau Guardian, Aug. 15, 1857, and New York Journal of Commerce, July 22, 1857. Also Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1866, vol. xlix, p. 51.

2

orders on England cut down by the influx of wrecked stuff. A decade later wrecks had become so common that "prices of almost all produce and manufactured goods are [were] perpetually undergoing the most extraordinary fluctuations, from famine to a glut, owing to the masses of shipwrecked property which pour in upon the market and entirely frustrate the calculations of the regular importer." But in a few years, as business developed, new ways of disposing of such surpluses were discovered. The Blue Book report indicates that more than £30,000 value of wrecked goods were exported in 1853, a year when the total exports amounted to £78,403,3 whereas a previous report had relegated all exports of 1850 and 1852 to the column of native produce. The total exports climbed rapidly to twice their average for the years 1846-50, while those of native products increased less than 40 per cent by 1860. Cotton which was not, and since the days of slavery had not been, much grown in the islands became prominent as an export. The profits on the exportation of things purchased at wreck sales were larger and surer than those of salving. An unprecedented impetus to trading resulted. The profits were partly speculative, and hence there developed a mania for buying not unlike the salvors' mania for salving. At the "Vendue House" on the wharf, wrote a governor, "there are the retail traders to be seen in great numbers almost every day, bidding for cases and packages whose contents are often only guessed at, and which have been thrown upon the Bahama shores, or picked up by the numerous wreckers. Reference to the table on page 637

1 1 Desps. of Cockburn to Glenelg, nos. 108 (1838) and 19 (1839). Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1850, vol. xxxvi, p. 146.

3 Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1854-55, vol. xxxvi, p. 48.

* Loc. cit., 1852-53, vol. lxii, p. 45. There may, however, be a slight error in the report. Its meaning for present purposes is perhaps that the exports of salved stuff had never before figured so prominently in the lists. The table on page 637, supra, shows considerable exports of foreign produce for 1848 and 1849.

6

Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1857, vol. x, p. 75. Cf. also loc. cit., 1850, vol. xxxvi, p. 146, 1856, vol. xlii, p. 40.

• Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1850, vol. xxxvi, p. 146. Cf. also House Votes, 1857, p. 25, Bahama Herald, Mar. 31, 1855, and Desp. of Colbrooke to Aberdeen, no. 62 (1835).

shows that in two decades, 1850-70 (omitting the extraordinary period, 1861-65), much more than half, and in 1867-70 more than three-fourths, of the exports of the colony were other than native products. Some of these were goods entered in ordinary commerce and re-exported; the rest were salved goods.

A satisfactory estimate of the profits realized by the trade in salved goods would be difficult to reach. But since the number of persons engaged in it was small, and their dependence upon the returns therefrom less immediate than that of the salvors upon salvage, the problems of their gains will be passed over for that of the wages of those who lived by the trade. Wrecking deserves to be classed with gold-hunting. Governor Rawson called it "a lottery in which the blanks far exceed the prizes, and in which the prizes too often bring only a redemption from debts incurred during the unprofitable wasted months of vain expectation." Rich prizes there were. The salvors' shares in four cases in 1864 amounted to £11,304 Is. 6d., or £2826 per vessel salved. In September, 1865, an American steamer was pulled off a shoal: £5840 3s. was granted as salvage, of which the owners of the wrecking vessels received £1826 14s. 4d., and out of the residue the common seamen received £17 11s. 5d. each. Again, thirty reported cases, including those of two large vessels, afforded as salvage £38,016, an average of £1267 per vessel.3 The earnings from one vessel appear from the following:

The earnings of a vessel engaged to windward, for a considerable part of . . . five years, and in which thirteen or fourteen men were continuously employed, gave for the share of the men for the five years only $3440 or $264 per annum. This, taking the time employed, and allowing twenty-four working days in the month, gave an average of $4.41 per month, or only 18 cents a day.*

Assuming that the average rates of salvage were 50 per cent and 40 per cent of the customs' showing of salved goods for

1 House Votes, 1866, p. 205.

Accts. and Papers of Parl., 1866, vol. xlix, p. 51. The figures are quoted, not based upon the present writer's calculations.

Loc. cit., 1868-69, vol. xliii, p. 41. * Nassau Guardian, Sept. 15, 1866.