Liquid Landscape. Michele Currie Navakas

      This message is particularly clear in Howison’s depiction of Manuel’s occupation as a Florida wrecker. Wreckers flourished along the Florida Reef during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by mastering ground where cargo ships frequently foundered. Essentially, wreckers were salvagers who profited by rescuing stranded vessels and crews in exchange for a substantial portion of the cargo to sell to the highest bidder in the domestic and foreign ports they frequented.⁵¹ Wreckers thrived, then, not only because of their intimate acquaintance with the intricacies of local terrain, but also because of their large network of associates, which often included escaped slaves, smugglers, Spanish fishermen, and independent adventurers—such as the white narrator of “The Florida Pirate” who supports himself by “forming a league with these outcasts of society.”⁵²