Peter Iredale and improvised invasion defenses

The four-masted steel bark Peter Iredale was built at Maryport in 1890 and grounded on the Oregon coast in 1906. The ship combined steel plates over an iron frame with the tall sailing rig of a late nineteenth-century merchant vessel. After its crew altered course near Tillamook Rock Light, fog, a rising tide, and strong westerly weather drove it onto Clatsop Spit. The initially undamaged hull became embedded while salvors waited for better conditions, and later salvage rights did not lead to the wreck being broken up. In 1942 the surviving site was wrapped in barbed wire as part of anti-invasion precautions, turning a merchant-sailing relic into a physical marker of fear created by Japanese submarine activity.