. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. A HISTORIAN'S COAST. raged across Europe and America Peru nationalized its guano deposits around 1840 — running the guano business as a state monopoly — and for the next 40 years earned most of its foreign exchange by selling dried bird feces. During the middle of the 19th century, the "guano gospel" spread like wildfire. The use of commercial fertilizers in general rose especially fast in the American South, where soil exhaustion was high, competition from Western lands was intense and agricultu
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. A HISTORIAN'S COAST. raged across Europe and America Peru nationalized its guano deposits around 1840 — running the guano business as a state monopoly — and for the next 40 years earned most of its foreign exchange by selling dried bird feces. During the middle of the 19th century, the "guano gospel" spread like wildfire. The use of commercial fertilizers in general rose especially fast in the American South, where soil exhaustion was high, competition from Western lands was intense and agricultural practices were relatively inefficient. By 1854, guano imports exceeded 175,000 tons a year, and by 1860, guano represented 43 percent of all commercial fertilizer used in the United States. To procure cheaper sources of guano, the Congress passed the Guano Islands Act in 1855. Under this law, American entrepreneurs could claim any uninhabited island in the world if it had the potential for guano mining. Under the terms of the Guano Islands Act, investors eventually claimed 94 islands, rocks and keys, including a tiny limestone crag between Jamaica and Haiti known as Navassa Island. The guano at Navassa Island was not mainly bird excrement; it was calcium phosphate and limestone that had been produced by the tectonic uplifting of coral reefs. Though not competitive in quality with Peruvian guanos, Navassa Island's guano — as it was known — was more affordable. This was an espe- cially important consideration after the Civil War, when few Southern farmers could afford the luxury of Peruvian guano. A group of Wilmington businessmen established the Navassa Guano Co. in 1869. They hoped guano would be a good return cargo for the seagoing vessels that carried lumber and naval stores to the Caribbean. To keep the guano's acrid smell out of Wilmington, they built their factory a couple of miles away on a marshy peninsula at the confluence of the Brunswick and
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookcollectionunclibra, booksubjectoceanography
