Summer Beam Books
Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific by Coll Thrush
Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific by Coll Thrush
Couldn't load pickup availability
Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific by Coll Thrush
A provocative retelling of shipwreck tales from the Northwest Coast
The Northwest Coast of North America is a treacherous place. Unforgiving coastlines, powerful currents, unpredictable weather, and features such as the notorious Columbia River bar have resulted in more than two thousand shipwrecks, earning the coastal areas of Oregon, Washington, and Vancouver Island the moniker "Graveyard of the Pacific." Beginning with a Spanish galleon that came ashore in northern Oregon in 1693 and continuing into the recent past, Wrecked includes stories of many vessels that met their fate along the rugged coast and the meanings made of these events by both Indigenous and settler survivors and observers.
Commemorated in museums, historical markers, folklore, place-names, and the remains of the ships themselves, the shipwrecks have created a rich archive. Whether in the form of a fur-trading schooner that was destroyed in 1811, a passenger liner lost in 1906, or an almost-empty tanker broken on the shore in 1999, shipwrecks on the Northwest Coast opens up conversations about colonialism and Indigenous persistence. Thrush's retelling of shipwreck tales highlights the ways in which the three central myths of settler colonialism--the disappearance of Indigenous people, the control of an endlessly abundant nature, and the idea that the past would stay past--proved to be untrue. As a critical cultural history of this iconic element of the region, Wrecked demonstrates how the history of shipwrecks reveals the fraught and unfinished business of colonization on the Northwest Coast.
"Innovative, unexpected, and deeply moving, Wrecked turns the history of a ship-destroying section of the Pacific coastline into a meditation on how colonial places are made and remade. An essential read."--Bathsheba Demuth
"This is a profound and challenging text, full of insights and intellectual rigor. . . . What drives the book and makes it such a satisfying read is the wonderful human stories it has to tell."--Rabble.ca
"The afterlives of shipwrecks, their impacts on communities, and the interactions between people, especially Indigenous and the outsiders who wash up on their shores, is powerfully explored and shared in this exceptional treatise. Coll Thrush has written a book that takes a global phenomenon and places it in a regional context with such brilliance that every other locality in the world familiar with shipwrecks can see the similarities and hear the echoes on their own shores."--James P. Delgado
"A history of shipwrecks naturally lends itself to storytelling, and Thrush utilizes the method of narration to great effect with evocative language and sitting-by-the-campfire pacing, qualities which should earn the book a wide audience. . . . Still, Wrecked is a rigorous work of scholarship representing years of deep research and critical analysis."--Pacific Historical Review
"Wrecked is a compelling read and is sure to be of interest to anyone who has been intrigued by tales of shipwrecks along the Northwest Coast."--British Columbia History
"Layered in tragedy, Thrush weaves shipwreck tales from songs, poems, newspapers, and oral histories to revisit some of the maritime clichés, like treasure maps and ghost ships, that subtly prop up settler colonial projects. In this way, Thrush demonstrates vividly that--like wreckage washed ashore and settled in sand only to be washed back out to sea again--colonization entangles, corrupts, and often kills, but it will not last forever."--Western Historical Quarterly
"Beautifully written, Wrecked excavates shipwreck afterlives to unsettle nostalgic histories of the Graveyard of the Pacific. By exploring what it means when colonialism wrecks on Indigenous shores, Thrush masterfully disrupts the tendency to center settlers in the stories we tell about the Northwest Coast's history."--Joshua L. Reid (Snohomish)
"If the test of a great book is whether it reframes the way we think about its subject, then Thrush has succeeded in delivering a new history of the Pacific Coast that connects maritime disaster to Indigenous and colonial history in original and provocative ways. . . . A superb book by a historian and writer at the height of his powers."--BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly
"Eschewing sensational tales of wrecked ships and doomed sailors, Thrush uses this critical history of shipwrecks to explore the complex relations between Indigenous peoples and newcomers, including castaways, rescuers, salvors, treasure hunters, and tourists. . . . This blend of maritime, cultural, and environmental history will resonate with historians and other specialists."--Library Journal
