Qualla: Peter Iredale: The Shipwreck That Stayed

Peter Iredale: The Shipwreck That Stayed: Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Stepney, CC BY-SA 3.0. "May God bless you, and may your bones bleach in the sands." Captain H. Lawrence raised his glass to his dying ship, and the Peter Iredale obliged. More than a century later, her ribs and bow still jut from the beach at Fort Stevens State Park, rusted the color of dried blood, tilting into the wind as if still trying to make headway. Of the roughly two thousand vessels that have wrecked in the Graveyard of the Pacific - that notorious stretch of water where the Columbia River collides with the open ocean - the Peter Iredale is the one you can walk up and touch.

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Image: Colin Stepney | CC BY-SA 3.0

Peter Iredale: The Shipwreck That Stayed: Steel and Sail from Maryport

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wilhelm Hester, Public domain. The Peter Iredale was built in the English port of Maryport in June 1890 by R. Ritson & Co, the largest vessel their yard had produced. She was a four-masted steel barque - 285 feet long, 2,075 net register tons, fashioned from steel plates riveted onto an iron frame. Her rigging...

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Image: Wilhelm Hester | Public domain

Peter Iredale: The Shipwreck That Stayed: Three Twenty in the Morning

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bobjgalindo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The voyage north along the Pacific coast was uneventful until October 25, 1906. At 3:20 a.m., Captain Lawrence spotted the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse through the darkness and altered course toward the Columbia River's mouth. What followed was a sequence that the Graveyard of the P...

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Image: Bobjgalindo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Peter Iredale: The Shipwreck That Stayed: Swallowed by the Sand

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kingofthedead, CC BY-SA 4.0. At first, the situation looked salvageable. The hull had sustained little damage, and plans were drawn to tow Peter Iredale back to sea during favorable tides. But the Oregon coast does not operate on human schedules. Week after week, the weather refused to cooperate. As the crew...

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Image: Kingofthedead | CC BY-SA 4.0

Peter Iredale: The Shipwreck That Stayed: Caught in the Crossfire

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kingofthedead, CC BY-SA 4.0. Thirty-six years after she grounded, Peter Iredale found herself in a war zone. On the night of June 21, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-25 surfaced off the Oregon coast and lobbed seventeen shells at Fort Stevens - one of only a handful of attacks on a mainland U.S. military inst...

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Image: Kingofthedead | CC BY-SA 4.0

Peter Iredale: The Shipwreck That Stayed: Bones on the Beach

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charles Knowles from Meridian Idaho, USA, CC BY 2.0. Walk the beach at Fort Stevens State Park today, and you will find what Captain Lawrence's toast foretold: bones bleaching in the sand. The bow section still stands, its iron ribs curving upward like the ribcage of some enormous beast. A few masts lie nearby. Rust has eaten the s...

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Image: Charles Knowles from Meridian Idaho, USA | CC BY 2.0