"In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange"

October 31, 2021 12:09 AM

Christine Riding, "Shipwreck, Self-preservation and the Sublime": Being "a subject that encourages the spectator to imagine 'pain and danger' and 'self-preservation,' 'without being actually in such circumstances' may well be why shipwreck ... was suited to the sublime." Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator [PDF; chapter summaries: 1 + 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]: "Humans live their lives and build their institutions on dry land. Nevertheless, they seek to grasp the movement of their existence above all through a metaphorics of the perilous sea voyage." Supplementing many previouslies, a number of shipwreck narratives offer further occasions for reflection.

• Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt [1991-1802 BCE], a ship of 150 cubits long and 40 cubits wide: Although "The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor" is clearly a fantasy, involving a giant serpent, it may mythologize the actual event of opening foreign trade under Sankhkare Mentuhotep III (Eleventh Dynasty) or Amenemhat I (Twelfth Dynasty). Incidentally, the story is also notable for having the earliest surviving signature on a papyrus, that of the "scribe of cunning fingers, Ameni-amen-aa." At nearly 4000 years old, the story evokes the time depth for the human awareness of shipwrecks, and a similarly brief yet profound view of shipwrecks over time is given in recent footage of wrecks found in the Black Sea, including "'the oldest intact shipwreck known'": "Journey Into The Abyss - Black Sea Shipwrecks - A Virtual Experience (360 Edition)" (2D Edition).
• 1767, the Nancy: In chapter 8 of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Equiano describes being shipwrecked in the Caribbean and by chance running into another group of shipwreck survivors before continuing onward to receive poor treatment in Georgia. At this point in his narrative, Equiano is a free man employed by a slave trader, though among other things he would later be instrumental in making the Zong massacre known to other abolitionists (timeline of his life events [PDF]; Sky History's "Olaudah Equiano and the British Abolitionist Movement" [46 min. audio]).
• 1795, the Catharine: Beginning on page 17 of A Narrative of the loss of the Catharine, Venus and Piedmont transports, and the Thomas, Golden Grove and Æolus merchant ships, near Weymouth, Charlotte Turner Smith re-tells the gripping first-person story of a woman who survived an event that claimed above two hundred lives. Smith (on MeFi previously) was a well-known novelist--an influence on Jane Austen--who described herself having been "on the Spot" of the disaster.
• 1803/1804, the Lady Hobart and the Hussar: William Dorset Fellowes's A Narrative of the Loss of His Majesty's Packet the Lady Hobart on an Island of Ice in the Atlantic Ocean takes place near Newfoundland at the start of the Napoleonic Wars as a ship of the Post Office Packet Service engages in a successful conflict but soon after collides with an iceberg, at which point three women and twenty-six men put to sea in a cutter and a jolly-boat for a harrowing journey to St. John's, summarized by the UK's Postal Museum. Less than a year later and also part of the Napoleonic Wars, a shipwreck in chapter 1 of Donat Henchy O'Brien's My Adventures During the Late War: A Narrative of Shipwreck, Captivity, Escapes from French Prisons, and Sea Service sets in motion a chain of events that would partially inspire the plot of Frederick Marryat's novel, Peter Simple.
• 1814, the Postboy: In his brief Narrative of a Shipwreck Off the Coast of North America in the Winter of 1814, then-Midshipman William A. Ferrar evokes his experiences on board the captured American ship, Postboy, using imagery like being 'buried alive' or 'seeing a ghost'--literary imagery like that traced in Emily Alder's "Through Oceans Darkly: Sea Literature and the Nautical Gothic" [PDF].
• 1831, the Rothsay Castle: In chapters 1-3 of A Circumstantial Narrative of the Wreck of the Rothsay Castle, Joseph Adshead reconstructs in extraordinary detail the wreck of a paddle steamer traveling from Liverpool to Beaumaris and Bangor (Wales). But it is chapter 7, "Personal Narratives" that turns out to be, in effect, a multi-perspectival oral history of the disaster, collecting the stories of William Broadhurst, John Coxhead, John Duckworth, Lawrence Duckworth, George Hammond, Henry Hammond, Edward Jones, Sidney James Marsden, James Martin, John Nuttall, Frances Payne, Elliott Rudland, Mary Whittaker, Robert Whittaker, and Henry Wilson--many relate the last moments of friends and loved ones who did not survive with them.
• Tenpō 12 [1841], a 24ft. boat belonging to Tokuemon of Usa Village: In Manjiro: The Man Who Discovered America, Hisakazu Kaneko re-tells the story of Nakahama Manjirō, a 14-year-old member of a Japanese fishing crew who wound up shipwrecked on Tori-shima until he was rescued by an American whaling ship and over the next ten years made his way around the world (map of his travels). In "The Saga of Manjirō," Junji Kitadai tells the same story more briefly. Both texts draw substantially from Drifting Toward the Southeast, Kawada Shoryo's richly-illustrated transcription of Manjirō's first-hand account.
• 1854/1934, the New Era and the Morro Castle: Julius Friedrich Sachse's The Wreck of the Ship New Era Upon the New Jersey Coast November 13, 1854 describes a wreck near Asbury Park that took the lives of over two hundred German passengers aiming to make a home in the US. Chapter 3, "Statements of Captain and Crew," calls out especially how the captain had abandoned them. By coincidence, the New Era ran aground at roughly the same location as the more famous Morro Castle, 80 years later: see "When the Wreckage of a Horrific Ship Disaster Became a Tourist Destination," as well as "George Watremez: Morro Castle Survivor" (personal narrative section) and the Pathe newsreel, "Morro Castle Aftermath."
• 1942/1944, the Northampton, the Hoel, and the Johnston: "A Survivor's Story" is the brief personal memoir of Glenn H. Parkin, who describes his experiences of Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the USS Northampton at the Battle of Tassafaronga, and the sinking of the USS Hoel at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Two short video interviews with an unnamed survivor tell the story of the USS Johnston, also at the Battle of Leyte Gulf: 1; 2. As the videos mention, the Johnston's commanding officer was Ernest E. Evans, a Native American eventually awarded the Medal of Honor. In 2019, traces of wreck of the Johnston were first discovered (detailed footage explaining it could also have been the Hoel), but this year the Johnston became the "deepest explored wreck" (press statement [PDF]).

Additional resources of related interest: "What is a Shipwreck?" is an essay by historian Jamin Wells answering a writing prompt for his Ph.D. qualifying exams and identifying assumptions and ambiguities in thinking about shipwrecks; Wikipedia has an extensive List of lists of shipwrecks by year; and the Internet Archive has two books by Keith Huntress available for checkout: A Checklist of Narratives of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea to 1860 and the anthology Narratives of Shipwrecks and Disasters, 1586-1860 (modeled on the many anthologies published in the 17th-19th centuries).

posted by Wobbuffet (3 comments total)

Then there were the "people who cursed the moon"

Centuries ago, about one ship per week wrecked along our shores. Lighthouses were few and far between; the fog and mist often all but obliterated their weak candlepower. But these beacons spaced along the coast–Highland, Nauset, Chatham and Monomoy Point–were the only reliable guideposts for sailors navigating off our tricky and dangerous shores.

Knowing this, a band of local scoundrels united to deliberately wreck, then plunder, passing ships. During the darkest hours, especially on wild stormy nights, these land-loving pirates criss-crossed the coast on horseback and planted large decoy lanterns at strategic points.

I don't see too much on the web but heard occasional comment by old salts around Boston/Cape Cod.
posted by sammyo at 9:51 AM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

We are pressed, pressed on each other,
We will be told at once
Of anything that happens

And the discovery of fact bursts
In a paroxysm of emotion
Now as always. Crusoe

We say was
‘Rescued’.
So we have chosen.

...

Now in the helicopters the casual will
Is atrocious

Insanity in high places,
If it is true we must do these things
We must cut our throats

The fly in the bottle

Insane, the insane fly

Which, over the city
Is the bright light of shipwreck

from George Oppen's 'Of Being Numerous'
posted by juv3nal at 2:07 PM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]

The passage between Martha's Vineyard and the south coast of Cape Cod, was, until 1910 or so when the Cape Cod Canal was completed, the third busiest waterway on the planet. It saw a good number of wrecks.

One of the worst was the grounding of the City of Columbus, considered one of the worst maritime disasters ever. I've been out there under the cliffs after dark and sometimes when the wind is just right, you'd swear you can hear...things.

Happy Halloween.
posted by vrakatar at 6:40 PM on October 31, 2021 [1 favorite]