Graduation Year
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
History
Major Professor
Philip Levy, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Fraser Ottanelli, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Jonathan Scott Perry, Ph.D.
Keywords
commemoration, fiction, salvage, community, remembering
Abstract
This thesis investigates the creative nature of memory at work in coastal city of Key West, Florida. Using the commemoration of the wreckers as a medium, I argue that the memory of wreckers is based on fictional maritime literature from the nineteenth century. The basis of the collective memory of wreckers in Key West from maritime fiction affects the way that the residents define themselves. Through embracing the fictional wrecker past that the monument to the wreckers represents, the residents of Key West embody their Conch identity. Thus, collective memory in this city works as a creative vehicle and shows that storytelling is what makes us. The thesis begins by giving an overview of the monument called The Wreckers, by sculptor James Mastin and its location. Next, it discusses the historiography of commemoration to situate the monument and this essay within the discussion of the meaning and purpose of monuments in public spaces. The second aspect of this thesis investigates nineteenth-century wreckers and the secondary scholarship that investigates them. Finally, the last section looks into nineteenth-century maritime fiction about wreckers and pirates. Through looking more closely at such fiction, specifically Richard Meade Bache’s The Young Wrecker of the Florida Reef, I argue that the symbolic imagery employed by Mastin in his 1997 monument found inspiration in Bache’s fictional novel.
Scholar Commons Citation
Whiting, Sarah L., "“Even the Birds Got More out of Her Than I Did”: Wrecking and Constructive Memory in Key West, Florida" (2024). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/10579
