SHIPWORMS and the MAKING of the AMERICAN COASTLINE Derek Lee Nelson University of New Hampshire, Durham
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University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Spring 2018 SHIPWORMS AND THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN COASTLINE Derek Lee Nelson University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation Nelson, Derek Lee, "SHIPWORMS AND THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN COASTLINE" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 2386. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2386 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SHIPWORMS AND THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN COASTLINE BY DEREK LEE NELSON Bachelor of Arts, The Evergreen State College, 2006 Master’s of Arts, Western Washington University, 2010 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History May, 2018 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2018 Derek Lee Nelson ii This dissertation has been examined and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in History by: Dissertation Director, Kurkpatrick Dorsey, Professor of History and History Graduate Program Director W. Jeffrey Bolster, Professor of History Jessica Lepler, Associate Professor of History Lucy Salyer, Associate Professor of History Christine Keiner, Associate Professor Science, Technology, and Society On April 18, 2018 Original approval signatures are on file with the University of New Hampshire Graduate School. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I’ve shown pictures of teredo to hundreds of people over the years. So, I have a pretty good idea how most will react. First comes the eyebrow raise, followed by the looks of confusion, curiosity, and disgust—sometimes all at once. Next comes the word. “Teredo” is infectious and most people can’t help but give it a whirl, mouthing it to themselves, quietly and hesitantly at first, usually as I drone on with my elevator pitch. I owe a debt to all of you who couldn’t look away and who couldn’t help but say the word aloud. I can’t name you all, but our conversations taught me how to tell stories about shipworms in ways that resonate with people—as I imagine they would have to people a hundred years ago or more. My deepest thanks go to Kurk Dorsey and Jeff Bolster. As a marine topic, this project fell to them by default. They shared and shouldered the burden of overseeing a peculiar topic and I’m grateful to both of them for permitting me the long leash that I required to pursue my own interests at my own pace. I’ve found that Jeff and Kurk work extremely well together and I’ve always felt that their advice complements and never competes. It’s hard to imagine what this project would have looked like without both cooks in the kitchen. Others from the University of New Hampshire have helped me along the way. Jess Lepler has been a supporter and mentor whose advice I wish I had followed more closely during my exile in Washington State. I bookended my time at UNH assisting iv Ellen Fitzpatrick with her modern history surveys and I’m grateful for her vote of confidence. In retrospect, I wish I had studied more with Jan Golinski, especially after taking his 2011 historiography class, the most entertaining course I’ve ever taken. My friends Sarah Batterson and Mike Verney rescued me from my isolation as the sole member of my graduate cohort and made me feel welcome in New Hampshire. Sarah deserves special thanks for helping with the Ancient Greek translations. Finally, a thanks goes to Department Chair, Eliga Gould, and Department Staff, Laura Simard, Lara Demarest, and, formerly, Thea Dickerman, who’ve made being a graduate student that much easier. The University of New Hampshire has funded some of this research. I was fortunate to receive several Summer Teaching Assistant Fellowships as well as the Steelman and Rutman Awards. I’m grateful for the 2014 Graduate Student Teaching Award. There are a number of other scholars outside of UNH who have helped. Far and away, marine biologist Jim Carlton has had the biggest impact on this dissertation. I met Jim shortly after I decided to go all in on shipworms and he put me on the scent for sources that I had no idea that I needed. I’m very grateful for the encouragement from Christine Keiner and John Gillis—both reviewed the blueprint for this dissertation. Dozens of others have offered valuable advice, usually between panels at conferences. Sadly, I can only name a few of you here. Chris Pastore kindly pressed me to think big. Aboard the Sabino in Mystic, Connecticut Matt McKenzie listened to my pitch and pushed me to embrace the coastal dimensions of the project and to play up the “weaponizing” of nature, as he likes to say. Matt Klingle generously gifted me research v on teredo that he did not include in his book. A special thanks goes to Mart Stewart who, as my thesis advisor, has listened to me ramble on about teredo perhaps longer than anyone else—though neither of us knew way back when that a distracting two-page tangent on shipworms in the middle of my master’s thesis would grow into a dissertation. I cut my teeth at several conferences, seminars, and institutes. My thanks go to the Massachusetts Historical Society for inviting me to present my research at the Boston Environmental History Seminar Series in 2014. So much of this dissertation incubated during a summer at Mystic as part of the Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime History in 2014. My thanks go to the Munson directors, Eric Roorda and Glenn Gordinier for their invitation. I’m grateful to Tom Robertson and Richard Tucker for allowing me to participate in the “Environmental History of World War II in the United States” workshop in Ohio in 2016—that workshop helped me sharpen ideas that have come to fruition in this dissertation. Finally, I’m grateful for the support from family and friends. Arikka has been there through the highs and lows of graduate life. Moreover, as a talented writer, she read every line of the dissertation and steered me away from esoteric language. My parents and siblings helped with my move back home and supported me while I finished writing. Thanks to everyone for your support. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................ iv LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................... viii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................. x CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 I. THE SHIPWORM DIASPORA Global Exchanges and Discourses in the Age of Sail ........... 22 II. “TIME FOR THE RAVAGES OF THE ‘TEREDO’” Nineteenth Century Coastal Designers Confront Shipworms Along the Southern Atlantic Seaboard and Gulf Coast ......... 64 III. THE BOOK WORM Knowing Nature Through Language .................................... 103 IV. “THE SCOURGE OF PUGET SOUND” How Teredo Hindered and Helped The People of the Pacific Northwest .................................... 136 V. AN UNNATURAL NATURAL DISASTER Marine Borer Invasions of San Francisco Bay ..................... 192 VI. “IS THE PORT OF NEW YORK IN DANGER?” The Northeast, Invasive Species, and the Professionalization of Marine Borer Research ..................... 232 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................. 270 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................... 277 vii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1: Shells of Teredo navalis ........................................................................ 2 FIGURE 2: Pile attacked by three genera of woodborers ........................................ 3 FIGURE 3: Teredo navalis ....................................................................................... 13 FIGURE 4: “Honeycombed” Timber ....................................................................... 14 FIGURE 5: Iconography of the Dutch Crisis ........................................................... 56 FIGURE 6: James Buchanan Eads (1820-1887) ...................................................... 77 FIGURE 7: Mississippi Jetties at South Pass ........................................................... 78 FIGURE 8: Willow Mattresses ................................................................................ 80 FIGURE 9: Creosote Chamber ............................................................................... 93 FIGURE 10: Domestic Creosote Production ........................................................... 101 FIGURE 11: Hollowed Wood .................................................................................. 109 FIGURE 12: Newspaper Graph .............................................................................. 131 FIGURE 13: Google Ngram ................................................................................... 132 FIGURE 14: Bankia setacea ................................................................................... 141 FIGURE 15: Seattle Harbor and the Duwamish Mudflats, 1854 ........................... 147 FIGURE 16: Lake Washington Ship Canal Route .................................................