Outrageous Seas

Outrageous Seas is about that time, and about the harrowing, almost mythic, experience of shipwreck, near-shipwreck, and survival in waters off Newfoundland.

There was a time in history when the sea was as important as the land for defining a country's social and cultural identity. Outrageous Seas is about that time, and about the harrowing, almost mythic, experience of shipwreck, near-shipwreck, and survival in waters off Newfoundland. Travellers from many walks of life - explorers and missionaries, traders, fishers and mariners, Native Peoples, aristocrats and immigrants - have left rare and fascinating first-hand accounts of such disasters. Their narratives span four centuries and touch many historical sub-themes such as the appeal of religion in times of crisis, gender roles, and the ocean-as-workplace. Apart from its obvious scholarly appeal, this collection evokes psychic responses to calamity and brushes with death, perhaps the most universal experience of all.

The Carleton Library Series is an enduring and significant initiative to publish and reissue documents and texts important to the history of the place we now call Canada. Begun in the 1950s at Carleton University, the series was intended to be a non-fiction counterpart to the New Canadian Library. In the new millennium the motivations for, and thus the mandate of, the series have shifted. While the CLS remains committed to humanities and social science research on the long histories of the territory called Canada, it now takes as its primary purpose the reimaging of how Canada understands itself. The series does not seek to define what Canada should be but rather invites scholars working on questions about the country's history, present, and future to reassess persistent mythologies and to imagine just shared futures. The CLS publishes books that engage in the transformative diversification of knowledge; that examine local and regional knowledges and experiences; that explore the relation of Canada to the world within and across borders; and that draw on a range of disciplines, theoretical traditions, methodologies, and epistemologies.

The CLS publishes original manuscripts and reissues out-of-print materials that are accompanied by new scholarly introductions and other editorial apparatuses. Manuscript proposals may be sent to the editorial board chair, Jody Mason, at jody.mason@carleton.ca or to any member of the editorial board.

CLS board members: Martha Attridge Bufton, Vandna Bhatia, Sheryl Hamilton, Jennifer Henderson, Laura Madokoro, Jody Mason, Pat Moore