Town Hall Seattle Arts & Culture Series

A fur-trading schooner beached in 1811. A passenger liner lost in 1906. An almost-empty tanker broken on the shore in 1999. These shipwrecks, and thousands more, are why the northwest coast of North America is sometimes called the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” Drawing from his book, Wrecked, history professor and author Coll Thrush tells the stories of many vessels that met their fate along this rugged coast and how they open up conversations about colonialism, Indigenous persistence, and place-based history. Shipwrecks are commemorated in museums, historical markers, folklore, place names, and the remains of the ships themselves. They’ve become a rich regional archive that has inspired Indigenous and settler survivors and observers to create meaning for these events. Thrush examines the ways in which shipwreck tales highlight––and debunk––myths of settler colonialism: the disappearance of Indigenous people, the control of an endlessly abundant nature, and the idea that the past would stay past. There’s no dou