prize8-8, Exercise 1: "Wreckers lured ships onto the rocks with false lights"

Model answer (check the details), using the six questions:

1. Who says it? Writers of ballads, sermons and novels, tourist guides, and some local traditions; the story has been repeated for centuries.
2. What exactly is claimed? That people deliberately caused wrecks by showing false lights. This is stronger than plundering a ship that had already been wrecked.
3. What would count as evidence? Court records of trials for causing a wreck, contemporary reports by customs officers and magistrates, survivors' testimony, and wreck inquiries that found false lights.
4. Compared with what? Documented plundering of wrecks, and wrecks in places without any suspected wreckers.
5. Which period? Mainly the 17th to 19th centuries, and chiefly the coasts of Cornwall and Wales, with parallels elsewhere.
6. What would change my mind? A clear case, proven in a court or documented by independent witnesses, of a ship lured by a false light.

Verdict: plundering of wrecks is well documented; deliberate luring is much less well supported and is rare or absent in the surviving evidence (check). A careful sentence: "Coastal communities plundered wrecked ships, but clear evidence that wreckers caused wrecks with false lights is lacking."

Care: absence of evidence is not proof that nothing happened, but a claim that rests on repetition alone is weak.