History of Wrecking

keyshistory.org

2 pointsrsj_hn4 comments

This article claims that Native Americans from Florida were used to salvage Spanish shipwrecks in the Marquesas. That's bizarre.

I mean, stranger things have happened (e.g., at one point dirty laundry was shipped from California to Hawaii by sailing ship, laundered, and returned), but I'm really curious why the Spaniards didn't use Native Americans from one of their Pacific possessions instead.

The marquesas are part of the Florida keys system, which was under Spanish rule at the time, so why wouldn't they use the locals instead of pulling labor from another possession?

So they are, or at least there's a group of islands called that, of which I was unaware. My mistake.

I was thinking of the more famous Marquesas:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquesas_Islands

Ahh, makes sense. This article is about the history of wrecking off the coast of the Florida Keys -- it's fascinating really. The economy of Key West was driven by wreckers who could take 20-40% of the value of the salvaged goods, and there was a whole system set up for quickly sending out salvage boats and then removing the goods as fast as possible, often in the middle of a storm and at great risk to life and limb of the wreckers. Sort of an old time of adventure.

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