You Know, Like Squirrels

I never got the lame ass racist Katrina arguments. People stole things that were going to be ruined by water, wind and neglect anyway. They didn’t TAKE anything that could have given anyone value. A lot of these people just seem pissed that some black folks got HDTV’s and playstations only White people should be able to afford.

It couldn’t have been about money. It had to be about uppity black folk.

The barrels remind me of the Napoleonic Wars, just one of many of Britain’s Finest Hours. They’re not loot. Technically, they’re booty, just like a prize of war acquired – nay, commandeered by any promising midshipmen under one’s command. Only the envious would use the verb plunder in these circumstances.

In that pair of Katrina photographs, the captions come from the observations of the photographers. The black man broke into a store and looted stuff from it, while the white couple were swimming in chest-deep water when bread and soft drinks floated past. Details here: http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/looters.asp

The very fact that David Kane is still here shows that he’s talking bull.

I really had no idea modern shipping involved wooden barrels. What do you suppose is in them?

“Foraging”? C’mon. The BBC’s early news report was headed: Scavengers take washed-up goods
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/6287457.stm

The report quickly goes on to make clear the “scavenging” is “breaking the law”.

But remember we brits are an island race with long traditions of trading slaves across oceans, smuggling and scouring the foreshores of Britain for anything left there for the taking thereof, especially along the south coast of England:

“During the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain saw a huge expansion in trade. As a result, each year hundreds of ships, packed with goods, travelled between Asia and Europe. Shipping traffic in the English Channel was dense, and shipwrecks led to the loss both of human lives and valuable cargo.”
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/texts/ship/shipwrecksandsmuggling.html

Best ask why the west country police force was so slow about closing off access to the beach?

By way of insight, here’s Rudyard Kipling’s famous celebration of smuggling with his Smuggler’s Song, prefaced by an appropriately quick and illuminating history of English smuggling going back to medieval times – and most know how much we esteem our history and ancient traditions:

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,
Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street.
Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Chorus:
Five-and-twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark – Brandy for the Parson,
‘Baccy for the Clerk;
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
http://www.villagenet.co.uk/history/1300-smugglers.html

It wasn’t GMF, but Compton MacKenzie who wrote Whisky Galore, later made into a film.

And the Sun’s front page today uses “looters” in its caption. They are all white.

10. Lemuel Pitkin:
Good observation about wooden barrels. In the last century, a wooden barrel was salvaged off the coast near Bristol. Containing an interesting alcoholic brew, the “find” yielded up months of drinking pleasure until the salvager reached the bottom and discovered an embalmed monkey.
One wonders: Which one was the embalmed monkey?

Heaven forbid any suggestion of “collusion” but perhaps as good west countrymen they had all read the Smuggler’s Song by Rudyard Kipling.

Students of US naval history will recall that in 1805 one of the first actions of the fledgling US navy was against pirates of the Barbary Coast to protect American ships trading in the Mediterrean.

By the 18th century, the British state did not tolerate pirates operating out of British ports flying the union flag. We had unofficial ship wreckers instead who pursued what was often a highly lucrative business unless checked by the authorities:

” . . the wreckers of Crigyll looted wrecked ships which they lured onto the Crigyll rocks using beacons and lights, simulating the harbour lights of Holyhead, near the mouth of the river Crigyll.”
http://www.rhosneigr.org.uk/History/robbers.html

“Wrecking was well known in Cornwall, where the rocky coastline, strong prevailing onshore winds and (sometimes) the display of false lights led many ships to disaster (this is also true in other parts of the celtic seaboard, such as South-west Ireland, the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales and Finistere in Brittany). Rather than helping shipwrecked sailors, the wreckers often murdered and stripped them of their possessions, for example Sir Cloudesley Shovell. The ships themselves were looted for their cargoes.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(shipwreck)

You forgot the best bit about the story: the ‘foragers’ have to fill in a form within 28 days or else they’re breaking the law.

This is in order to give the owners of the stuff the chance to say that they want it back. Since the stuff is usually unsaleable and covered by insurance, and since Lloyds’ syndicates aren’t really interested in running garage sales which are unlikely to cover their costs, they usually won’t unless it’s something very valuable.

There’s nothing about breaking into a store in the Snopes page.

9. I actually followed the link to snopes, and surprise it doesn’t say what it’s claimed to say.

22. There’s nothing about breaking into a store in the Snopes page.

Oh really?

From the page:
Jack Stokes, AP’s director of media relations, confirmed today that [photographer Dave] Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. “He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods,” Stokes said, “and that’s why he wrote ‘looting’ in the caption.”

And:

The photographer who took the Getty/AFP picture, Chris Graythen, also posted the reasons behind his caption:
I wrote the caption about the two people who ‘found’ the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not ‘looted’ them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. there were a million items floating in the water — we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. it had no doors. the water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow.

pg, you’re not being literal enough. The photographer in reality only saw the alleged looter “go into the shop” without any breaking involved.

Better to take something you can eat and that can’t be traced. A BMW motorcycle would probably have the manufacturer’s serial numbers and could be traced if the “looters” sold them (how could they ride them without a license?)

Overnight news on the scavenging:

“More people headed for Branscombe beach overnight, but they met a very different scene from the free-for-all of previous days. The narrow lanes were lined with flatbed trucks and vans rented as far away as Manchester and Liverpool.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2562852,00.html

It is also reported that the authorities are invoking statutory powers dating back from mid-19th century in a (belated?) effort to deter, control, recoup the losses from or punish the scavenging:

“Mark Rodaway, the Acting Receiver of Wreck, said the ‘despicable’ behaviour of scavengers had persuaded him that special powers dating back to the Merchant Shipping Act 1854 were needed to force people to return goods.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6290887.stm

Are all the scavengers telepathic?

If not, how do they know for sure that the owners won’t mind when their goods are taken?

Sorry, the contents of a grocery store, that’s important. A store that stocks a lot of perishables.

Interesting that ‘salvor’ has not been mentioned so far. The first story I saw about this contained several mentions of the term in relation to some 198x law about shipwrecks, the Receiver of the Wreck, and the Crown claiming salvage rights. Salvors then are either legitimate agents of the Crown or the equivalent of poachers. It might also be worth noting that the Crown lays claim to backshore land created by the deposition of sand/soil. It is regarded as derelict land and defaults to the Crown. In this case, backshore is any land between the high tide mark and the existing property line as defined in a deed or other document.

Isn’t some insurance company going to reimburse the shipper for these beached goods anyway?