In the history of exploration, the contacts between European mariners and the people of newly found lands often make a central and most interesting topic. In contrast, in “mainstream” maritime history the relationships between coastal people and foreign seafarers sailing past their shores have received fairly little attention. Admittedly, this may be regarded a peripheral chapter in terms of maritime economic history, but it contains quite surprising and dramatic features, even examples of direct confrontation and violence. While such is not astonishing at all with regard to the Pacific Islands or the South China Sea, it is not what one expects to find on the coasts of Northern Europe, at least not after the Middle Ages. Yet such features may be of great interest to those engaged in the study of small peasant communities, and their mental history, in particular.

It seems that even as late as the end of the eighteenth century the coastal waters of the Northern Baltic in the Gulf of Finland were not as safe as one would think regarding the great volume of shipping sailing between Western Europe and the capital of Russia, St. Petersburg. Not only was the Finnish coast treacherous with all its small skerries, cliffs and underwater shoals but if a seafarer was unlucky enough to run into distress in such a “stone-soup” he could not expect much help from the local people. Rather he had better to rely only on himself and even be prepared to defend his property and life, for the fishermen living on this area had a fairly bad fame of eagerly plundering all the wrecks with which the God happened to bless their shores. In the old Dutch charts one particularly dangerous group of small islands was called Perkeischären (“Devil's Skerries”). One wonders whether this name referred only to geographical features.

An extremely interesting glimpse into the conditions of this coast is furnished by a first-hand account of a ship-wreck dating from the fall of 1808. It was written by a young English lady, Miss Martha Wilmot, who had stayed in Russia for no less than five years and left for home from Cronstadt aboard an American ship in October 26.