Shipwrecks and the clash of Northwest coastal cultures

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https://www.nwpb.org/local/2025-10-24/wrecked-sinking-ships-and-colliding-cultures-on-the-northwest-coast

Wrecked: Sinking ships and colliding cultures on the Northwest Coast
Northwest Public Broadcasting
By Anna King
Published October 24, 2025 at 8:59 PM PDT

A hulking, sienna-colored rust skeleton, encrusted with barnacles, rests just along the seashore on the Northwest Oregon Coast.

This is the Peter Iredale. It wrecked here more than a century ago on Oct. 25, 1906.
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Tourists play on the rusted ship near Astoria. Dogs strain against their leashes to get a deep-salty whiff. They all explore its shape and ribs.

The Iredale is one of thousands of shipwrecks in this region, known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Storms, fog, shifting sand bars, rocks, clashing currents and brutal tides all combine into treacherous waters.

For centuries, shipwrecks caused clashes of cultures and worlds in the Northwest. The wrecks created opportunity but also great tragedy for Indigenous people. But today, Native American tribes are still vibrant and alive. And the echoes of those wrecks are still felt today in Northwest myths and culture.

“The larger history of shipwrecks on the Northwest Coast tells us a lot about the collision between Indigenous and settler cultures, and how we are all still living with the results of that collision today,” said Coll Thrush, a historian, professor and author of the recent book, “Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific.”

“And so as these people move up and down the beach, they're really, again, living inside the wreckage, in some ways, of the history of this coast.”

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