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Mapping the Coastal Frontier: Shipwrecks and the Cultural Landscape of the Early Republic Littoral
Book chapter

Mapping the Coastal Frontier: Shipwrecks and the Cultural Landscape of the Early Republic Littoral

Jamin Wells
Formation Processes of Maritime Archaeological Landscapes, pp.31-52
When the Land Meets the Sea, Springer Nature
01/12/2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48787-8_3
Web of Science ID: WOS:000413721100003

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Abstract

This chapter explores the myriad efforts of public and private individuals and organizations to map the early American coastal frontier. At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the American littoral was an isolated, parochial, preindustrial space strewn with shipwrecks on the margins of a fledgling nation. In the decades after Independence, shipwrecks became one of the few reasons why outsiders trekked into this veritable frontier. Federal agents came to secure the duties that financed government operations, humanitarian organizations to succor the shipwrecked, and entrepreneurs to acquire and commodify the local knowledge that was essential for safe navigation. At the same time, newspaper editors, artists, authors, and other cultural producers brought tales of coastal shipwrecks into the homes and workplaces of Americans, introducing them to the wild coast and disaster through sensational narratives. Coastal shipwrecks, as this chapter demonstrates, are not only events, material remains, processes, or narratives that illuminate a maritime cultural landscape, but ones that defined and fundamentally shaped the landscape.

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