Queering the Coast: Shipwreck and Colonial Failure on Northwest Shores

Drawn from a forthcoming book on the linked histories of colonialism and shipwreck on the northwest coast of North America, this paper uses queer theories of failure (most notably those articulated by Jack Halberstam) to critically examine narratives of maritime disaster in a region known as “the Graveyard of the Pacific.” The paper examines the twin prophecies of colonialism—that an endlessly abundant nature could be controlled, and that Indigenous peoples would disappear—and shows the ways in which each has failed to come true: our ecological limits have been reached, and Indigenous nations up and down the coast are experiencing profound cultural, political, and legal resurgence. Focusing on the 1906 destruction of the passenger liner Valencia, a disaster in which 150 people lost their lives along the shore of Vancouver Island, the paper articulates a new critical approach to shipwreck that emphasises imperial fragility, technological limitation, and colonial failure that draws on both settler and Indigenous archives.