Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific

Review By Jason Colby

June 23, 2025

In his evocative preface to Wrecked, historian Coll Thrush confesses to being, in the words of poet W. S. Merwin, “dry shod”—a landlubber.  “Big water makes me more than a little nervous,” he admits.  “Ultimately, then, mine is a view from shore” (xvii-xviii).  But what a view it is.  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.

Historians make their living by looking backward and judging the choices and actions of others.  Yet Thrush reminds us that humans live their lives forward not knowing what is to come.  From the perspective of 2025, with no prospect of “decolonization” in any political sense in North America, it is easy to forget how fragile the enterprises of European fur trading and settler colonialism once appeared on a coast dubbed the “Graveyard of the Pacific.”  In this spirit, Thrush explores “shipwrecks” not merely as discrete events that disrupt human plans and lives, but also as a metaphor for the uncertainties and contingencies of the history of the Pacific Coast.  “Shipwreck,” he observes, “interrupts the smooth functioning of both power and history.” (20)

Thrush’s study is not a complete departure from existing maritime history.  We encounter familiar events, such as Maquinna’s enslavement of Englishmen John Rodgers Jewitt in 1803 and the tragic detonation of John Jacob Astor’s ship Tonquin in Clayoquot Sound in 1811.  But Thrush places it all in a new light by centring Indigenous knowledge and agency in this history, including the pivotal role of First Nations in providing initial and essential aid to shipwrecked sailors and passengers through the early twentieth century.  Previous clashes may have taught newcomers to fear the peoples of the coast, but they relied on Indigenous aid when their vessels foundered.  “Indigenous people were the primary saviors of shipwrecked sailors in the Graveyard of the Pacific,” Thrush reminds us, “never mind the stories that white people told about them.” (74)

Yet even as shipwrecks highlighted the reliance of the colonial project on Indigenous labor, they provided settlers with a sense of connection to the region.  Indeed, Thrush’s most original insights emerge in his analysis of the intersection between maritime tragedies and colonial claims of belonging.  Materials, memorabilia, and stories from shipwrecks literally shaped settler society on the coast.  “In wood and canvas, steel and copper,” he writes, “the nearly countless lost ships of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries together tell a story of colonial failure that, ironically, would deepen settler claims to territory.” (86)  The Graveyard of the Pacific may have sunk ships, but it also helped newcomers sink roots in an unfamiliar place.  As Thrush puts it, “The making of a graveyard was also the making of a settler society.” (112)

Despite it many strengths, Wrecked does have a few weaknesses.  First, because each chapter bounces around chronologically, some readers may struggle to follow the flow of events.  Second, Thrush sometimes falls into jargon. Overall, his prose is accessible and even elegant, but terms such as “futurity” and “settlerist mythology” make occasional appearances.

Quibbles aside, this is a superb book by a historian and writer at the height of his powers.  Thrush’s study will not only make for excellent class reading but will also appeal to readers beyond the academy.  Much like Josh Reid’s The Sea Is My Country (2015), Thrush restores Indigenous agency and historical contingency to our understanding of this region’s complex past and contested future.