catastrophe vs shipwreck

catastrophe

noun
  • A disaster beyond expectations. 

  • Any large and disastrous event of great significance. 

  • The dramatic event that initiates the resolution of the plot; the dénouement. 

  • A type of bifurcation, where a system shifts between two stable states. 

shipwreck

noun
  • destruction; ruin; irretrievable loss 

  • An event where a ship sinks or runs aground. 

  • A ship that has sunk or run aground so that it is no longer seaworthy. 

verb
  • To wreck a boat through a collision or mishap. 

How often have the words catastrophe and shipwreck occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )