I like to put a good dose of Keys’ history in my stories. Wood’s Reward, a story that I have been releasing in installments (check it out here), features a pair of wreckers from back in the mid-1800s. At that time Key West was the richest city per capita in the country and with 3,000 residents, the largest in Florida. Much of that wealth was accumulated by Wreckers who roamed the reef looking for foundering ships.
Why Key West? The reason is the Gulf Stream, a water-borne highway running from the Americas toward Europe. The image above was from today and shows the path of the current. The Spanish treasure fleets used it and commercial shipping continues to follow the current today. When I’m fishing off the Keys, I can tell where the Stream is running by the direction the tankers and containerships are heading. Inside the Stream which is closer to the reef, they will run counter to the 6-knot northeasterly current. The ships running northeast are in the Stream. Fluctuations in the distance from the edge of the Gulf Stream to the reef running parallel to the Keys are one of the reasons for the numerous wrecks. The ocean river changes almost daily. The other causes are storms and navigation errors.
With that kind of wealth for the taking, there was sure to be tension, if not war, between the wreckers The backstory for the book features a clash between two of the more notorious wreckers: John Geiger and Jacob Houseman.
Wreckers came in several varieties: generally good and mostly bad. But the line is often gray. The first wrecker on site made a deal with the captain. In exchange for a percentage of the goods aboard, he would take the passengers and crew to safety and salvage the cargo. This made him the Wreck Master and responsible for subcontracting portions of the salvage operation to the later arriving wreckers.
In many cases, the wreckers worked together, but in some, they were merely pirates who had changed “professions.” Stories abound about the use of false lights and other devious methods to lure ships onto the reef and shoals.
In Wood’s Reward, Geiger is the good guy, and Houseman the bad. Those roles could have easily been exchanged under different circumstances.
John H. Geiger appeared above board. He came from a Key West family and was engaged as a pilot as part of Commodore David Porter’s anti-piracy squadron in 1823. The squadron scoured the waters surrounding the Keys, but many of those who escaped simply changed their skin. Geiger became a prominent, and one of the richest, members of the community. In addition to the family residence on Whitehead Street now known as the Audubon House, Geiger also owned his own key—Geiger Key, which was his reputed base of operations.
Jacob Houseman was originally from Long Island. He moved to Key West with the intention of becoming a wrecker. Seeing what he called a monopoly, he bought land and relocated to Indian Key in the Upper Keys. From there he set up his own base of operations.
Both men were larger than life and important to the history of the Keys. They also had a reputation as honest men, but there had to be some friction between them. I took this as a base point and fabricated a scene of a wreck that led to the silver Wood finds in the Big Spanish Channel.
I’ve read/listen to all of the Mac Travis books and Kurt Hunter books. Would love to listen to Woods reward, when ever that might happen?