November 14th, 2019

The Annual Carlton Pinheiro Lecture

The record of shipwrecks in Rhode Island begins immediately after the arrival of Europeans in the early 17th century with the grounding of a Dutch trading vessel, and thousands more vessels came to grief in its waters in the following centuries, through bad weather, human error, equipment failure, and military action. Some of these shipwrecks were epic disasters, with many fatalities and the total loss of the vessel; others were relatively minor misfortunes in which the ships were salvageable. Come see the dramatic pictures and hear the fascinating stories of a select sample of shipwrecks!

Charlotte Taylor is the author of Images of America: Rhode Island Shipwrecks, published in 2017. She is an archaeologist at the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, where her job includes maintaining an inventory of the location and condition of the state's shipwrecks (and very occasionally diving on them!).