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Balclutha

The 1886 square-rigger BALCLUTHA.

Overall Length 301 feet

Length of Deck 256.5 feet

Beam 38.6 feet

Depth 22.7 feet

Gross Tonnage 1689

Height of Mainmast 145 feet

Balclutha is a three-masted, steel-hulled, square-rigged ship built to carry a variety of cargo all

over the world.

Launched in 1886 by the Charles Connell and Company shipyard near Glasgow, Scotland, the

ship carried goods around Cape Horn (tip of South America) 17 times.

It took a crew of about 26 men to handle the ship at sea with her complex rigging and 25 sails.

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Balclutha History

British Deep waterman

On January 15, 1887, with a twenty-six-man crew, Balclutha sailed under British registry from Cardiff,

Wales, on her first voyage. She was headed for San Francisco. The ship entered the Golden Gate

after 140 days at sea, unloaded her cargo of 2,650 tons of coal, and took on sacks of California

wheat.

Balcultha’s First Career: Grain for Bulk Goods

Balclutha made one round trip voyage each year while a part of the Europe to San Francisco grain

trade. Her first career lasted 13 years. The voyage took months to travel from Europe to San

Francisco. She brought grain grown near San Francisco to Europe She returned to San Francisco

with a cargo from Europe. Which helped build San Francisco as it boomed, grew quickly, during the

Gold Rush. Balclutha brought coal, pottery, carpet, furniture, olive oil, chocolate, mustard, glass,

cement, and alcohol from Europe

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Balcultha’s Second Career: Timber

In 1899 Balclutha was moved to Hawaii and joined the bustling Pacific Coast lumber trade. For three

years the ship sailed north to Puget Sound, Washington, and then across to Australia. Much of the 1.5

million board feet she could carry ended up underground, used for mining timbers in Australia’s

Broken Hill Mine. Balclutha docked, tied up to a dock, at Port Pirie, South Australia, where the timbers

were unloaded and transported 250 miles inland to Broken Hill.

Balcultha’s Third Career: Salmon Packer

When Balclutha went aground in 1904, the Alaska Packers Association purchased her for the cheap

price of $500. After many repairs, they renamed her Star of Alaska.

During this career, the ship sailed up the West Coast from Alameda, California, carrying supplies and

cannery workers, people who packed the salmon. Star of Alaska anchored out in Chignik Bay, Alaska,

during April. After the supplies were unloaded and the cannery workers had settled into the company’s

camp ashore, only a ship keeper or two were on board. In early September, filled with cases of

canned salmon, Star of Alaska started the 2,400-mile

voyage back to San Francisco Bay. She was considered

a fast sailor, averaging better than twenty-two days for

the trip north and fifteen days when homeward bound.

This photo, taken in 1919, shows a bit of heavy weather

aboard Star of Alaska.

During the winter the ship was laid up with the rest of

the Packer’s fleet of thirty-odd vessels in Alameda,

where shipwrights, people who fix ships, worked on

getting the boat ready for another voyage. In 1911, the

poop deck, a deck that forms the roof of a cabin built in

the rear, or "aft", part of a ship, was made larger to

house Italian and Scandinavian fishermen. Later, more

bunks were added in the ‘tween deck for Chinese

cannery workers. While called Balclutha, the ship

carried a crew of twenty-six men. The Star of Alaska

took over 200 men on the trip north.

Star of Alaska was the only sailing ship the Packers sent

north in 1930, and when she returned that September

she was retired.

Restoration

In 1954 the San Francisco Maritime Museum purchased Pacific Queen for $25,000. Assisted by

donations of cash, materials and labor from the local community, the Museum restored the vessel and

returned her original name. The ship was given to the National Park Service in 1978,

and Balclutha was made a National Historic Landmark in 1985.

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The Grain Trade

The ‘49ers panned for fortunes in mountain streams, but less then twenty years later farmers

discovered California’s real wealth: its hot, fertile valley floor. Soon horse-drawn wagons filled with

sacks of wheat rolled from the fields to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. Steam-driven boats

and railroad boxcars hauled the 100-pound bags along the Carquinez Straits to Port Costa, where

large ocean-going vessels like Balclutha loaded the grain.

California’s grain crop drew hundreds of British vessels through the Golden Gate each year. The hard

dry California wheat traveled the 14,000 nautical miles, miles on the ocean, to Liverpool. The grain

always sold at a high price. Many ships came to load the grain caused low shipping rate for coal and

other goods and materials being brought back to San Francisco.

Like the Gold Rush, the grain trade shaped California’s future. The low cost of high-quality coal from

Europe spurred the growth of manufacturing and transportation. The easy access to international

markets allowed California to be independent from the East Coast and the railroads. The grain trade

attracted investment and made jobs in banking, in shipping, and in agriculture. The demand for grain

sacks alone pumped $2 million per year into the local economy. Growers paid 10-15 cents apiece for

the bags that Chinese workers wove from Calcutta jute.

The Life

The long months at sea made were hard and lonely for the crew. Crewmen were hired by the voyage

and not paid until the voyage ended. They were often "encouraged" to jump ship before the voyage

was complete. This would mean the captain wouldn’t have to pay the crewmember. Only the captain,

who stayed with a ship for many voyages, had job security.

The captain’s wife sometimes came on the voyage with him. This gave

him the chance to spend time with his family. The crew was not allowed

to bring their family on the vessel. During Balclutha's last voyage as a

British ship Captain Durkee’s wife, Alice, had a baby girl. They named the

little girl Inda Frances because she was born on the Indian Ocean while

the ship was headed for San Francisco. ."

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Eureka

Eureka's Statistics

Overall Length 299.5 feet

Extreme Width 78 feet

Gross Tonnage 2,420

Horsepower 1500

Passengers 2300 souls

Automobiles 120

Eureka is a wooden-hulled, side wheel paddle steamboat.

From the passenger deck up, she is nearly identical fore and aft.

Her "double-end" design made disembarking quicker and easier.

Eureka's large "walking beam" steam engine remains intact.

Eureka History

Eureka was built in 1890, at Tiburon, California, for the San Francisco and North Pacific Railway (and named Ukiah to honor San Francisco and North Pacific Railway's new rail extension into that California city). The freight-car ferry, Ukiah was San Francisco and North Pacific Railway’s "tracks

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across the Bay," brining trains from Sausalito to San Francisco. After World War I, Ukiah needed many repairs, and shipwrights, people who fix boats, worked for two years replacing all of her; boats are always thought of as females, structure above the waterline. This kind of reconstruction was called "jacking up the whistle and sliding a new boat underneath." Re-named Eureka, the vessel, ship, was launched from the Southern Pacific yard as a passenger and automobile ferry in 1923. She looks the today as she did in 1923. Steam Ferryboats on San Francisco Bay The Bay's first steam ferry, the tiny Sitka, arrived in 1847, on a Russian cargo ship. The ferry, Kangaroo, made the first regularly scheduled crossings in 1850. After Mexico gave up California to the United States, the Bay Area's population exploded. The cause of this population increase was John Marshall’s discovery of gold in the American River in 1848. It is said that San Francisco's Ferry Building was once the second busiest passenger terminal in the world. London's Charing Cross Railway Station was the first busiest. At one time, Southern Pacific Railroad ran forty-two ferryboats on the Bay. They transported 50,000,000 passengers per year. Construction of the Bay and Golden Gate bridges in the mid 1930s caused the ferryboat era, a period of time, to end. In 1941, Eureka had the last Marin County run. By the 1950s regular ferry service was limited to railroad connections. Eureka kept working until 1957 when her crankpin snapped while crossing the bay. She was removed from service. One year later, the San Leandro made the last ferryboat run across the Bay. The Walking Beam Engine

The very top of the walking beam steam engine. Eureka's tall "walking beam" is the last working example of an engine-type once common on America's waterways. Manufactured, made, by Fulton Iron Works of San Francisco, this engine remains unchanged to this day. Oil was burned in boilers, a container that heats water to produce steam, which moved a huge part of the engine vertically, up and down. The walking beam changed this up-and-down motion into a circular motion that moved the paddlewheel shaft. There were two paddlewheels, each twenty-seven feet in diameter, which made twenty-four complete turns per minute.

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Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUDQYzE9gcM Restoration

Ferryboat Eureka at the dry dock, 1998-1999 In February of 1994, Eureka exited San Francisco Dry dock, out of water storage, after a $2.7 million restoration project. The steamship had been in the shipyard since October. A crew of 45 skilled craftsmen filled small holes in the hull, bottom of the boat, and hammered in over 9000 eight-inch spikes. They putter on the hull and then plated it with 12,000 square feet of shining copper. The vessel had suffered from rot in the edges of her main deck. The huge beams holding up her paddle wheels and paddle boxes had fallen apart and were replaced with steel. The overhanging ends and sides of the ferry were also repaired. To prevent rot, mainly caused by rainwater, borate rods were put inside all the new timbers, pieces of wood. This is a new technology that was not invented when the vessel was originally built. October of 1999, Eureka entered San Francisco Dry dock for a $1 million restoration project to fix the above water part of the vessel. A large part of that dry dock was the replacement of the boat’s four large wooden structures that support the paddlewheels and upper decks.

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Hercules

The steam tug Hercules, built in 1907, navigating on San Francisco Bay.

Hercules Statistics

Length 151 feet Beam 26 feet Draft 18 feet aft, 10 feet forward Gross Tonnage 409 Engine 3 cylinder, triple expansion Cylinders 17", 24", and 41" with 30" stroke. 500 Indicated Horsepower (ihp) Fuel Type Bunker C oil Boiler Scotch marine fire tube. 16' diameter, 11' 9" long. Four oil-burning furnaces

Hercules is a steam powered tug built for ocean towing

The 151-foot ship, of riveted steel construction, still contains her original triple expansion

steam engine

Built on the East Coast in 1907, she towed her sister ship from Camden, New Jersey around

South America to San Francisco

Hercules also towed sailing ships, disabled vessels, barges, log rafts, a cassion (a steel

structure used for closing the entrance to locks) for a dry dock at Pearl Harbor, and a cassion

to help build a Panama Canal lock

The tug usually carried a crew of three firemen, three oilmen, a chief and two assistant

engineers, three deckhands, cook, two mates and a captain

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Hercules History

Long Tows on the Open Ocean

In 1907, John H. Dialogue and Son, a company from Camden, New Jersey, built Hercules. She had been ordered by the San Francisco-based Ship owners’ and Merchants’ Tugboat Company, to join their fleet.

When completed, Hercules towed her sister ship, the Goliah, through the Strait of Magellan to San Francisco. Both vessels were oil-burners; Goliah carried fuel, water and supplies for her sister.

Hercules towed barges, sailing ships and log rafts between Pacific ports. Winds usually made travel up the coast by sail both difficult and long. Tugs often towed large sailing vessels to points north of San Francisco. In 1916, Hercules towed the C. A. Thayer to Port Townsend, Washington. The trip took six days. She also towed the Falls of Clyde, now a museum ship in Hawaii.

On trips back down the coast, Hercules often towed huge log rafts with millions of board feet of Northwest timber to Southern California mills. At other times, Hercules towed barges of bulk cargoes between other West Coast Ports and to Hawaii. During the construction of the Panama Canal, she towed a huge floating caisson, a steel structure used for closing the entrance to locks, to the Canal Zone.

In her deep-sea days, Hercules usually carried a crew of fifteen-enough manpower for her Engine Department to stand three watches while underway. The deep narrow hull made life uncomfortable at times because it rode low in the water and the main deck was often wet. However, the food was good and the work was steady. Tugboat captains were generally well paid and highly respected. It took much experience to bring a tug and a heavy tow through high seas in bad weather. The captain also needed to have good judgment to navigate the shallow bars and narrow entrances of West Coast ports.

Bay Tug The Western Pacific Railroad Company eventually bought Hercules. Her career changed significantly; she no longer served as an ocean-going tug, but shuttled railroad car barges back and forth across San Francisco Bay. She worked until 1962 when changing transportation patterns began. The railroads were declining and the introduction of diesel-powered tugs ended her career.

Restoration

Hercules avoided the scrap yard, but deteriorated until the California State Park Foundation acquired her in 1975 for the San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park. The National Park Service took over the task of her restoration in 1977. In 1986 she was designated a National Historic Landmark. Hercules has been documented as part of the Historic American Engineering Record's Maritime Record.

"Out through the Golden Gate, the most beautiful harbor in the world. North, towing this barkentine to Port Washington in Canada. Thence south, empty, to Astoria where we picked up six million feet of timber in a raft to tow south to San Diego. Long, slow, lazy days, making no more than three knots. Even the patent log [a device trailed in the water to measure speed] would not work. We rigged a fishing line on it and caught beautiful king salmon on the way."

--Albert J. Hody, fireman, describing life aboard Hercules in 1919. Excerpted from an oral history in the Park's collection.

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C.A. Thayer

The lumber schooner, C. A. THAYER, at Gray's Harbor in 1903. [NPS, SAFR E3.8495n]

Extreme Length 219 feet

Length on Deck 156 feet

Beam 36 feet

Depth 11.38 feet

Gross Tonnage 453

Height of Mainmast 105 feet

The CA Thayer is a wooden-hulled, three-masted schooner, designed for carrying lumber.

She was built in 1895 in Northern California at Hans D. Bendixsen’s shipyard in Fairhaven, CA.

The original hull was made of dense, old-growth Douglas fir carefully chosen for shipbuilding.

She sailed with a small crew including four seamen, two mates, a cook, and the captain.

Lumber Schooner

In 1895, Danish-born Hans D. Bendixsen built C.A. Thayer in his Northern California shipyard (located across the narrows of Humboldt Bay from the city of Eureka). She was named for Clarence A. Thayer, a partner in the San Francisco-based E.K. Wood Lumber Company.

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Between 1895 and 1912, Thayer usually sailed from E.K. Wood's mill in Grays Harbor, Washington, to San Francisco. But she also carried lumber as far south as Mexico, and occasionally even ventured offshore to Hawaii and Fiji.

Thayer is fairly typical of West Coast, three-masted lumber schooners in size (219' extreme) and cargo capacity (575,000 board feet). She carried about half of her load below; the remaining lumber was stacked ten feet high on deck, and secured with chain (as illustrated in this 1912 photo). In port, her small crew (eight or nine men) served double-duty as longshoremen; unloading 75,000 to 80,000 board feet was an average day's work. After sustaining serious damage during a heavy, southeasterly gale, C.A. Thayer's lumber trade days ended in an Oakland shipyard, in 1912. But it was really the rise of steam power, and not the wind, that pushed her into a new career.

Salt-Salmon Trade Early each April from 1912 to 1924, C.A. Thayer hauled 28-foot gill-net boats, bundles of barrel staves, and tons of salt from San Francisco to Western Alaska. This deck view shows her underway, in 1914. She spent the summer anchored out at Squaw Creek (see photo) or Koggiung; the fishermen worked their nets and the cannery workers packed the catch on shore. Thayer then returned each September, her hold stacked with barrels of salted salmon. Vessels in the salt-salmon trade usually laid up during the winter months, but when World War I inflated freight rates (1915-1919), C.A. Thayer carried Northwest fir and Mendocino redwood to Australia. These off-season voyages took about two months each way. Her return cargo was usually coal, but sometimes hardwood or copra (dried coconut meat, from which coconut oil is pressed).

Cod fisherman From 1925-1930, C.A. Thayer made yearly voyages from Poulsbo, Washington, to the Bering Sea cod fishing waters, off the Alaskan coast. In addition to supplies, she carried about thirty men north, including fourteen fishermen and twelve "dressers", the men who cleaned and cured the catch. At about 4:30am each day, the fishermen launched their Grand Banks dories over Thayer’s rails, and then fished standing up, with hand lines dropped over both sides of their small boats. When the fishing was good, a man might catch 300-350 cod in a five-hour period. After a decade-long, Depression-era lay-up in Lake Union, Seattle, and the U.S. Army purchased C.A. Thayer from J.E. Shields, a prominent Seattle cod fisherman, for use in the war effort. In 1942, the Army removed her masts and used Thayer as an ammunition barge in British Columbia. After World War II, Shields bought his ship back from the Army, fitted her with masts once again, and returned her to cod fishing. This bustling photo (ca. 1946-50, P9, 8493.) illustrates her post-WWII period. With her final voyage, in 1950, C.A.Thayer entered the history books as the last commercial sailing vessel to operate on the West Coast.

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Restoration The State of California purchased C.A.Thayer in 1957. After beginning restoration in Seattle, Washington, a volunteer crew sailed her down the coast to San Francisco. The San Francisco Maritime Museum performed more repairs, and opened C.A.Thayer to the public in 1963. The vessel was transferred to the National Park Service in 1978, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1984. After three full careers, and over 100 hundred years, she remains -- restored and maintained for future generations -- to be experienced at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

The Lumber Trade As late as the California Gold Rush, East Coast vessels still hauled New England lumber 13,000 miles around Cape Horn to San Francisco. But that soon changed. Captain Stephen Smith, of the bark George Henry, established the first Pacific Coast lumber mill in a redwood forest near Bodega, California, in 1843. By the mid-1880s, more than 400 mills operated in California's Humboldt forest region alone.

At first, lumbermen shipped their planks to market in old East Coast square-riggers. But these aging ships were inefficient -- they were hard to load and required a large crew to operate. The booming lumber industry needed specialized vessels, and it wasn't long before shipyards sprang up to supply them.

Hans Bendixsen opened one such yard at Fairhaven, California, in 1865. Bendixsen built many vessels for the lumber trade; in addition to C.A.Thayer he constructed ninety-two sailing vessels between 1869 and 1901 -- thirty-five of them three-masters.

Sailing lumber schooners were built of the same Douglas fir as the planks they carried. They had uncluttered deck arrangements for ease of loading and were especially handy for maneuvering into the tiny, Northern California ports called "dog-holes".

Many West Coast lumber schooners shared another feature: they were rigged "baldheaded"-- without a topmast. This rig simplified tacking into the strong winds when bound north. They did carry topsails, set on the "pole" sections of the mast, but the sails were much smaller and easier to handle than on the standard topmast rig. Most of the work on the topsails could be done from the deck.

Even though lumber schooner crews had to load and unload their own cargo, most sailors preferred a "coastwise" berth to going "deepwater." At $30 a month, $40 for the man who ran the steam-donkey engine, the pay was good. The coast ships had a reputation for serving good food and plenty of it. Lumber schooner crews, unlike those of deep watermen, often stayed together for many voyages.

Inevitably, progress overcame the sailing ships. Steam-powered schooners proved more dependable and cost effective. Although sailing vessels like C.A.Thayer competed with steamers and railroad

boxcars well into the 20th-century, in1905 the last sailing schooner commissioned for the lumber trade ended her service career.