‘It is an ill wind that blows good to nobody': the marine environment, shipwrecks and wrecking in the 19th century Atlantic Archipelago

Coastal inhabitants of the nineteenth century Atlantic Archipelago witnessed an increasing number of shipwrecks, driven by greater storm frequency and intensity at the end of the Little Ice Age, coupled with increased global shipping. They viewed shipwrecks in an ambiguous, conflicted way, as both tragedy and opportunity for subsistence. Focusing on the Atlantic-facing coasts of the Blasket Islands (western Ireland), north Cornwall (England), and the Shetlands and Orkneys (northern Scotland), this chapter is informed by the coastal history framework, one that disrupts the land-sea binary and critically examines the entanglements of humans with the physical interface of the sea, shore and land, and also atmospheric and oceanic systems. It seeks to give more nuance to the behaviour and beliefs of the coastal rural poor as they negotiated winter storms and the arrival of shipwrecks on their shores. Like other ‘amphibious’ pluriactive subsistence activities, the coastal poor’s need for wrecking-as-subsistence changed with modernity as new technology and aids to navigation decreased the number of shipwrecks at the same time as a lessening in storm intensity meant that the occasional shipwrecks no longer provided resources and food.