The act provides that unclaimed bodies of dead persons cast ashore from the sea should be removed by the churchwardens and overseers of the parish, and decently interred in consecrated ground.

The passage of the 1808 act was one of the consequences of the wreck of the Royal Navy frigate HMS Anson in Mount's Bay in 1807.

Prior to the passage of this act it was customary to unceremoniously bury drowned seamen without shroud or coffin, in unconsecrated ground.

However, the burial in this manner of the many dead from the Anson, and the length of time that many of the bodies remained unburied, caused controversy and led to a local solicitor, Thomas Grylls, drafting a new law to provide more decent treatment for drowned seamen.

[1] A monument to the drowned sailors, and to the passing of Grylls' Act, stands above Loe Bar, near Porthleven, Cornwall.