Externally indexed torrent

If you are the original uploader, contact staff to have it moved to your account

Textbook in PDF format

- Offers a comprehensive account of the social and economic impact of shipwrecks around the shores of England and Wales from the 1550s to the 1750s
- Provides a unique window into local social relationships among landowners, common people, government officials, and seafarers
- Includes dramatic testimony from shipwreck survivors, witnesses, and participants in shoreline salvage
- Compares literary and religious discourse to documented accounts of actual shipwrecks
- Examines the practicalities of wreck recovery, including underwater exploration and diving.
- Presents a critique of the 'moral economy' of shipwreck 'plunder'
Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea is a work of social history examining community relationships, law, and seafaring over the long early modern period. It explores the politics of the coastline, the economy of scavenging, and the law of 'wreck of the sea' from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I to the end of the reign of George II. England's coastlines were heavily trafficked by naval and commercial shipping, but an unfortunate percentage was cast away or lost.
Shipwrecks were disasters for merchants and mariners, but opportunities for shore dwellers. As the proverb said, it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good. Lords of manors, local officials, officers of the Admiralty, and coastal commoners competed for maritime cargoes and the windfall of wreckage, which they regarded as providential godsends or entitlements by right. A varied haul of commodities, wines, furnishings, and bullion came ashore, much of it claimed by the crown. The people engaged in salvaging these wrecks came to be called 'wreckers', and gained a reputation as violent and barbarous plunderers. Close attention to statements of witnesses and reports of survivors shows this image to be largely undeserved. Dramatic evidence from previously unexplored manuscript sources reveals coastal communities in action, collaborating as well as competing, as they harvested the bounty of the sea.
Born and educated in England, David Cressy has made his career in the United States as an historian of early modern Britain. He taught in the Claremont Colleges, California State University Long Beach, and the Ohio State University before retiring to write and travel. When not in British archives and libraries he may be found exploring the beaches and deserts of the American West