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Who Profited When Ships Deliberately Struck the Florida Reef?
Who Profited When Ships Deliberately Struck the Florida Reef?
The idea that wrecks on the Florida Reef were inevitable hides a darker possibility: by 1848 an average of 48 ships a year were wrecked on the reef, and Key West hosted 47 licensed wrecking vessels by 1858-so who stood to gain when the sea itself became a machine for profit? Did some wreckers or merchants deliberately encourage or engineer shipwrecks to feed an industry that generated seven hundred admiralty cases in a single year?
In this episode, we lay out the facts of the wrecking economy that grew around the Florida Reef: the…
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