wreck n. Reference library
The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military
... n. 1 the destruction of a ship at sea; a shipwreck: the survivors of the wreck. 2 a ship destroyed in such a way: the salvaging of treasure from wrecks. v. 1 (usually be wrecked ) cause the destruction of (a ship) by sinking or breaking up: he was drowned when his ship was wrecked. 2 involve (someone) in such a wreck: sailors who had the misfortune to be wrecked on these coasts. 3 ( wrecking ) cause the destruction of a ship in order to steal the cargo: the locals reverted to the age-old practice of wrecking. 4 suffer or undergo...
wreck Quick reference
Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins (3 ed.)
...wreck [ME] When it first appeared wreck meant ‘cargo or wreckage washed ashore from a wrecked or stranded vessel’. The word came into English from Old French wrec . The source was an Old Norse word meaning ‘to drive’ that was related to wreak , ‘to cause a lot of damage or harm’, and to rack . A person in a state of stress or emotional exhaustion has been a wreck since the 1790s and a nervous wreck since about 1870. Wretch [OE] and wretched [ME] are related to...
wreck Quick reference
A Dictionary of Law (10 ed.)
... n. 1. (shipwreck) The destruction of a ship at sea, as by foundering in a storm or being driven onto rocks. 2. The remains of a wrecked ship. These are defined in section 255 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 as “jetsam, flotsam, lagan and derelict found in or on the shores of the sea or any tidal water”. In the UK the salvor of property from a wreck must declare their action to the Receiver of the Wreck ( see salvage ). 3. Goods cast up by the sea from a wrecked...
wreck Quick reference
A Dictionary of Law Enforcement (2 ed.)
... 1 (shipwreck) The destruction of a ship at sea, as by foundering in a storm or being driven onto rocks. 2 The remains of a wrecked ship. 3 Jetsam : goods cast overboard in order to lighten a vessel which is in danger of being sunk, notwithstanding that afterwards it perishes. 4 Flotsam : goods lost from a ship that has sunk or otherwise perished which are recoverable by reason of their remaining afloat. 5 Lagan : goods cast overboard from a ship which afterwards perishes, buoyed so as to render them recoverable. 6 Derelict : property, whether...
wreck Quick reference
The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (2 ed.)
... , as defined by the UK's Merchant Shipping Act 1995 , includes jetsam , flotsam , lagan , and derelict . Any wreck or wreck material found in UK territorial waters , or outside territorial waters but brought within them, has to be reported to the Receiver of Wreck , however unimportant it may appear to the finder. Nowadays, most material recovered comes under the heading of derelict or flotsam. The Receiver only deals with what is found in tidal waters. Material from non-tidal waters is treated as if it was on land, and comes under different...
wreck Reference library
Australian Law Dictionary (3 ed.)
...wreck The remains of a ship, or part of a ship, apparently without an owner. The right to claim all wreck was once a royal prerogative . For salvage purposes, wreck consists of articles or goods which belonged to or came from ‘any ship that has been wrecked, stranded, or in distress, including any portion of the hull machinery or equipment of any such ship’. Wreck includes ‘ jetsam , flotsam , lagan , and derelict found in or on the shores of the sea or any tidal water’: Navigation Act 1976 (Cth) s 294. Discovery of a shipwreck is a notifiable event...
wreck vessel Quick reference
The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (2 ed.)
... vessel , an unpowered vessel, painted green, with the word WRECK in white letters painted on each side. Like the wreck buoy it has been replaced by the IALA maritime buoyage system 's isolated danger mark...
wreck buoy Quick reference
The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (2 ed.)
... buoy , a buoy , painted green with the letter W painted prominently on it in white. It has now been replaced by the IALA maritime buoyage system 's isolated danger mark...
Black Assarca wreck Reference library
David Phillipson
The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity
...Assarca wreck Shipwreck in shallow waters of the Red Sea off Black Assarca island, Eritrea. No details of the ship itself are yet available; it carried amphorae of a type produced c. 6th century at Aila (in modern Jordan) and exported, probably containing wine , to the Aksumite kingdom where pottery of this type has been found, notably at Adulis , Matara , and Aksum . David W. Phillipson R. K. Pedersen , ‘The Byzantine-Aksumite Period Shipwreck at Black Assarca Island, Eritrea’, Azania 43 (2008),...
Legal Wreck, A (1888) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (3 ed.)
...Wreck, A ( 1888 ) , a play by William Gillette . [ Madison Square Theatre , 102 perf.] Olive Grey ( Nina Boucicault ) is the adopted daughter of an eccentric old New England sea captain, Edward Swift ( Alfred Hudson ), and is courted by both Swift's ruffian son Ed (George Fawcett ) and suave Henry D. Leverett ( Boyd Putnam ). The men fight over the girl, after which a young attorney, Richard Merriam ( Sidney Drew ), leads each man to believe he has murdered the other. But there is some method in Merriam's cavalier humor, since he knows who Olive's real...
Nervous Wreck, The (1923) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (3 ed.)
...Wreck, The ( 1923 ) , a comedy by Owen Davis . [Sam H. Harris Theatre, 279 perf.] When timid, hypochondriacal Henry Williams (Otto Kruger ), recovering on an Arizona ranch from his latest nervous attack, helps Sally Morgan (June Walker ) escape an unwanted marriage, he finds himself in a heap of trouble. The pair are pursued by a posse, they run out of gas, and Henry is forced to hold up a passing motorist to get additional fuel. Then they hide in a neighboring ranch, posing as a cook and waitress. By the time Sally's father agrees not to force her...
Receiver of Wreck Reference library
Australian Law Dictionary (3 ed.)
...Receiver of Wreck The Australian Maritime Safety Authority established by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority Act 1990 (Cth) or its appointed delegate: Navigation Act 1912 (Cth) s 6....
Batavia, wreck of the Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
..., wreck of the , took place on the night of 4 June 1629 on the reefs of islands in the Indian Ocean, about 30 kilometres off the western coast of Australia. The Batavia was a Dutch ship, contracted under the East India Company for the spice trade, and named after the Indonesian trading port to which it was sailing. Following the wreck, Captain Francisco Pelsaert led a party that proceeded by boat to Batavia for assistance, leaving his crew of men, women and children as castaways. A group of the survivors mutinied, forcing the others to submit to...
Batavia, wreck of the Quick reference
Kenneth Morgan
Dictionary Plus History
...wreck of the The Dutch East India Company ship Batavia was wrecked on the reefs of the Houtman Albrohos off the Western Australian coast on 4 June 1629 . Most of the passengers and crew managed to reach islands in the vicinity of the wreck. A mutiny and murders occurred among the survivors. Parts of the wrecked ship were discovered by marine archaeologists in the 1970s. Kenneth...
Wreck of the Hesperus, The Reference library
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable (19 ed.)
... of the Hesperus, The An episode made famous by H.W. Longfellow ’s ballad of 1840 , formerly widely learned by schoolchildren. The Hesperus was wrecked on Norman’s Woe, near Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1839 . It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wintry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr, To bear him...
‘Wreck of the Hesperus, The’ ([Lit.]) Quick reference
A Dictionary of Reference and Allusion (3 ed.)
...Wreck of the Hesperus , The’ [Lit.] A poem by H. W. Longfellow ( 1840 ) which tells of the destruction of a schooner, the Hesperus , which was caught in a storm and wrecked on the reef of Norman's Woe, off the coast of Massachusetts, in 1839 . > Used to describe a state of disorder or disrepair When he went back to the room it was filled with the slight but offensive smell of face powder and there were clothes everywhere. Miserably, he dressed. ‘The wreck of the blasted Hesperus,’ he said. V. S. Naipaul A House for Mr Biswas ...
Wreck of the Hesperus, The Reference library
The Oxford Companion to American Literature (6 ed.)
... of the Hesperus, The , literary ballad by Longfellow , published in Ballads and Other Poems ( 1841 ). Based on the actual wreck of the Hesperus , in which one body was found lashed to a piece of wreckage, the poem tells of the ill-fated voyage of the schooner, whose skipper refuses to head for port despite an approaching hurricane. When the gale descends, he wraps his little daughter in a seaman's coat, lashes her to the mast, and remains at the helm until he is overcome by the cold. The ship is shattered upon the reef of Norman's Woe near Gloucester,...
‘Wreck of the Deutschland, The’ Quick reference
The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature (4 ed.)
...Wreck of the Deutschland, The’ A poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins , occasioned by the shipwreck in December 1875 of a German transatlantic steamer off the Kentish coast. Among the dead were five Franciscan sisters from Westphalia; the poem identifies them as victims of Bismarck's anti-Catholic ‘Falk’ laws, which forced many into exile. The text experiments with a new metric Hopkins ‘long had haunting [his] ear’, sprung rhythm . The Month , a Jesuit journal, declined to publish the poem in 1876 ; Robert Bridges included it in the 1918 edition of Hopkins's...
‘Wreck of the Deutschland, The’ Reference library
The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7 ed.)
...Wreck of the Deutschland, The’ A poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins , occasioned by the shipwreck in December 1875 of a German transatlantic steamer off the Kentish coast. Among the dead were five Franciscan sisters from Westphalia; the poem identifies them as victims of Bismarck's anti-Catholic ‘Falk’ laws, which forced many into exile. The two-part poem wonders about the role of violence in God's scheme, turning to the shipwreck as an instance of God's ability to make himself known through calamity. It concludes with a hope for England's re-conversion to Catholicism...
wreck Quick reference
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
... what is cast ashore by the sea; ruined or disabled ship XIII; disabling of a vessel XV. — AN. wrec — ON. * wrek , f. * wrekan drive ( see WREAK ). Hence wreck vb. make a wreck OF. XV (cf. AL. wrecāre XII). wreckage wrecking; remains of a wrecked vessel....
