KEY WEST, Fla. -- Hundreds strong, they gathered at the dock,anticipating the arrival of another salvage boat. Men, women, children -- almost the whole town was there.
"Shipwreck ashore!" someone shouted.
New riches, others thought.
About once a week during the heyday of America's merchant-marine traffic in the mid-19th Century, the scene was repeated: a vessel colliding with a jagged coral reef, all but invisible even on a sunny day, or swept off course by a wicked windstorm. Recovery boat pilots -- "wreckers," they were called -- rushing toward the disaster, claiming the spoils and bringing them to Key West.
Finders keepers, or so maritime law, written mostly by judges at the southern tip of Florida, declared.
Onto the dock the booty would spill. Then into a warehouse. Gold and silver. Pearls and diamonds. The finest furniture and linens. Shotguns. Tobacco. Dry goods. Grand pianos. Some would be returned to the owner of the wrecked ship, if he had survived.
But most of the treasures would be readied for auction or awarded by "wrecking courts" to those who controlled the salvage operation, a distinction usually earned by being first at the scene.
In many eyes, wreckers were heroes, and, indeed, they often saved people, not just cargo. And they risked their lives, especially during hurricane season.
Others saw wreckers and auctioneers and wharf owners as pirates or unscrupulous profiteers. Legend holds that a few would set up false beacons to lure mariners into harm's way.
Whether through valor or villainy, the most successful wreckers built and furnished opulent homes thanks to others' misfortune. And Key West, so far removed from the center of civilization, became the richest town in the nation.
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