In this scene from the Salem Marine Society membership certificate, a coastal schooner is waiting off shore while cargo is unloaded from a small rowboat, or lighter, onto a horse-drawn cart.

Schooners like this one, carrying a crew of five or so men, carried cargo up and down the coast of the United States and into the Caribbean. Many of the small coastal communities the schooners traded with had no wharves, so lightering cargo to shore was a common way to unload or take on cargo.