Vail & Vickers Boats

The original Vaquero, circa 1940.

E. K. Smith

Quick Facts

Amenities

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Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

Vail & Vickers, as well as their neighbors on the Channel Islands, operated unique livestock businesses wherein their location required a transportation system entirely relying on boats and, to a smaller extent, aircraft. From the time of Alpheus Thompson shipping cattle and sheep on a small schooner to the final shipment of cattle off Santa Rosa Island, boats have played a key role in ranch operations. Santa Rosa Island owners almost always had a boat specifically for transporting livestock, supplies, and personnel. Few other places in the Americas operated this way, and the Vail & Vickers ranch was among the last.

Mildred E., 1901-1909
The wooden, two-masted Mildred E. was built in 1884 in Meteghan, Nova Scotia, and was registered by Walter L. Vail and J. V. Vickers in December 10, 1901. Vail & Vickers used Mildred E. in island service for a short time. In 1903 the firm had the Santa Rosa Island constructed expressly for livestock transport, leaving Mildred E. to few duties. Proving unsatisfactory to the needs of the company, Vail & Vickers abandoned Mildred E. in 1909, claiming she was unfit for service.

Santa Rosa Island, 1903-1915
Some confusion has existed as to the Santa Rosa and the Santa Rosa Island. They were actually two different vessels. A. P. More's sailing schooner Santa Rosa wrecked in San Miguel Island's Cuyler Harbor in November 1899. Vail & Vickers contracted construction of the 87-foot, gasoline schooner Santa Rosa Island in Wilmington, California in 1903. Vail & Vickers put her to work hauling sheep off the island by July of 1903.

After the ranch owners obtained the Vaquero, three of Walter Vail's sons-N. R., Ed and Banning-took the Santa Rosa Island on a four-month voyage to Mexico in 1915, leaving San Pedro for Cabo San Lucas, the Gulf of California, and Mazatlán. They and their friends, with a hired captain and cook, spent their time "fishing, hunting, trading with the locals of coastal fishing villages, and socializing with Mazatlán's upper society of the day." Apparently the boat was sold shortly after the trip to Mexico and entered service in the South Pacific.

Onward
Smaller boats served the island's smaller needs for transportation to and from Santa Barbara for supplies and provisions. Vail & Vickers' power boat Tortuga operated around Santa Rosa Island in the early 1910s, hauling supplies and mail for various camps on the island. Little else is known of it or of Colleen, another small vessel on the island. Vail & Vickers purchased the 64.5 feet long motor launch Onward for $7,737 in 1921 to perform errands around the island and channel in the 1920s and 30s. C.W. Smith, ranch foreman, used her for various tasks, including retrieving lumber from a wreck that came in handy for building corrals. Smith reportedly took Onward to Santa Barbara after the 1925 earthquake to check on damage there. The Vails kept her on a mooring at Bechers Bay. Vail & Vickers sold Onward in August 1942 to the DeLuxe Water Taxi Company, hoping to stave off the potential military seizure of the main island boat Vaquero, reasoning that the government would not take their only vessel; the attempt failed.

Vaquero, 1913-1943
To bring consistency and reliability to the island cattle transportation challenges, Vail & Vickers commissioned a new cattle boat in 1913 and christened her Vaquero. She was not the first Vaquero to operate in southern California waters. Harris Newmark recalled that a steamer Vaquero offered excursions from San Pedro to Santa Catalina in August of 1871. Vail & Vickers registered Vaquero in 1914.

William Muller built Vaquero as a sturdy workhorse of a ship. She measured 121 feet and was "beamy," or wide, in order to handle the cattle cargo and of a shallow draft to allow navigation close to shore.

Rigged with two masts, she had six staterooms to sleep 18, a galley and dining room, and two toilets in the single deckhouse. Three generators supplied electricity for lights, an icebox, and a 25-watt radiophone. Two fuel tanks held 2,000 gallons each, and two water tanks stored a total of 1,800 gallons. She was originally powered by a gasoline engine, which was replaced in 1928 with a Western Enterprise six-cylinder diesel.

The holds, divided into five cattle pens, had a capacity of about 10,000 cubic feet, or 200 head of cattle, which constituted seven carloads (rail cars) on the mainland. The deck, equipped with 3.5-foot gunnels topped with two-by-sixes to hold the cattle in, was divided into ten pens. A ramp would be deployed to load and unload the cattle to and from the deck and hold.

The Vails docked Vaquero at San Pedro for many years, loading and unloading cattle at nearby Wilmington. The 115-mile trip to the island from Wilmington took at least twelve hours, and in the worst weather up to 23 hours, providing somewhat of an adventure when the Vail family came out to the island many times during the year. Margaret Vail Woolley recalled the family's first trip to the island on the Vaquero around 1928:

"My mother decided to trick us out in little yachtsman's uniforms. So she did-little white pants, little hats. We were so cute . . . and cold and filthy but over we went and slept. There were cabins on the Vaquero then . . . we could get our whole family in the rear cabin by doubling up considerably."

On a typical weekend trip to Santa Rosa Island, the family would board Vaquero after school on Friday and sleep aboard in the staterooms during the overnight trip. A cook made hot meals in the cozy galley, a popular spot to stay warm during winter voyages. After spending Saturday and Sunday on the island, the family departed Sunday night, arriving in time for Monday morning school. During the 1930s, Russ Vail recalled, "the vessel was used a little more easily in those days," with cheaper fuel and labor costs, so the Vail family traveled to and from the island on the boat regularly.

Vaquero not only shipped the supplies and cattle for Santa Rosa Island, but also contracted with the other islands' operators. In 1937 Vaquero transported much of Edwin Stanton's new sheep to Santa Cruz Island and regularly transported Robert Brooks' sheep to and from San Miguel Island and Ed Vail's sheep to and from San Nicolas Island. The Vails hired out Vaquero for other purposes in the off-season, including hauling supplies to southern California ports, as a fishing barge off Santa Monica, for wreck salvage, and, at one point in the 1930s, acting as a mother ship for a whaling operation. Vaquero captain Claude Morris recalled some of the memorable off-season voyages:

"The Hollywood studios used the boat for many movies. One early one was "Laurel and Hardy Go to Sea." Other trips were hauling turtles from Turtle Bay in Mexico, tuna from San Diego, beans from Port Hueneme . . . . Catalina Island had an over population of rattlesnakes, so we hauled a group of young wild pigs to Catalina from Santa Rosa Island. Deer . . . were taken to Santa Rosa for sport hunting."

At least once Vail & Vickers delivered cattle to San Francisco, according to Morris, and made a short run to Gaviota across the channel: "There was no dock in Gaviota, so the cattle were just pushed overboard and herded ashore with skiffs, as the cattle would often swim out to sea."

The United States' entry into World War II caused a chain of events that would alter the sea transport of Vail & Vickers cattle for many years to come. In December 1942 Vail received a letter from Commander G. W. D. Dashiell, the port director at San Pedro's Naval Transportation Service, informing him that the US Army would requisition Vaquero for wartime service. Vail had reportedly sold their smaller boat Onward in an attempt to circumvent taking of the Vaquero. The tactic didn't work, so Vail renewed the ships papers on January 1, 1943 and Vail delivered the boat to the Army at San Pedro on January 14th, ending thirty years' service by the sturdy and unique cattle boat of Santa Rosa Island.

Vaquero then traveled across the Pacific Ocean under its own power. She was spotted off Biak Island in New Guinea, painted green, but its fate after 1944 is unknown. However, one researcher traced the boat up to 1954 when it was still in use by the Army.

The Navy was aware of the need for beef in the war effort and, being sympathetic to the Vails' predicament, made available landing barges to ship Santa Rosa Island cattle. The Navy used the event as an exercise, using three LCTs (landing craft) and transporting 3,000 head of cattle to the beach at Ventura. Of the landing methods, Al Vail explained simply, "Well, you drop the ramp and kick 'em off . . . most of 'em didn't even have to go through the water."

Unfortunately for the Vails, by the fall of 1943 the landing craft were needed elsewhere. Ed Vail hired Edwin Stanton's island schooner Santa Cruz to restock the island that fall, but found that the Santa Cruz was "totally inadequate for that size job." Vail & Vickers turned to the only answer they could at the time- hiring barges and tugs to make the cattle movements.

For almost fifteen years following the war, the Vails used rented barges and tugs to move cattle to the mainland. At one point they bought and converted a landing craft for the job, but it sank off west Santa Cruz Island in rough weather. The barges were equipped with pens and loaded from the Bechers Bay pier using cattle chutes, as they had on the Vaquero. Occasionally, to unload calves that typically balked at entering the chute on the pier, the cowboys built a ramp of sand to the beached barge and drove the livestock ashore or drove them ashore simply by opening the pens and shooing the calves out into the shallow water.

Vaquero II, 1959-1999
After more than 15 years hauling island cattle by barge and tug, and no doubt tired of the inconvenient and costly method of transport, Vail & Vickers contracted with Lindwall Boat Works in Santa Barbara to construct a 64'6" wooden cattle boat. Six open cattle pens constituted the bulk of the boat's square footage, with a capacity of about 100 head of adult cattle or 210 calves. The boat would be half the size of the original Vaquero and hold half the number of livestock as cargo, but would be faster and more efficient both in operation and crew requirements (it required only a skipper and a deckhand). In February 1959, the boat was delivered to Santa Barbara Harbor for launch and the Vails christened the boat Vaquero II.

Vaquero II became a landmark at Santa Barbara Harbor. Operation between Port Hueneme and Santa Rosa Island for cattle shipments took about five hours. It made regular runs to the island (about every ten days) with food and supplies from its homeport at Santa Barbara Harbor, a trip of about three hours. Considered to be the last operating wooden cattle boat on the Pacific Coast, it handled the island cattle shipments with few breakdowns and enjoyed a reputation for seaworthiness.

The Vails also used Vaquero II to haul Stanton Ranch cattle and sheep from Santa Cruz Island after their venerable schooner Santa Cruz wrecked off anchor in a storm in 1960. Vaquero II hauled Santa Cruz Island livestock for 26 years, including the final shipment of cattle after Carey Stanton's death in 1987. The Gherini family of east Santa Cruz Island also employed Vaquero II for their sheep shipments after their boat Hodge wrecked in 1976. Vaquero II held up to 600 sheep.

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner columnist Cholly Angeleno wrote of the challenges an uninitiated passenger might have faced on what must have been Vaquero II in the early days:

"I remember when one of the Vails'] cattle ships stopped over at Catalina, with Ed Vail skippering the vessel. He promptly invited Hook Beardslee and me to take "the cruise" to Santa Rosa to pick up some cattle. But when we got aboard ship we promptly declined the offer. The farmyard aroma was stifling!"

With the end of ranching in 1998, Vail & Vickers donated Vaquero II in 1999 to a nonprofit organization and it was converted for other uses.

For more detailed historical information and citations, please refer to the Historic Resource Study: Island Legacies - A History of the Islands within Channel Islands National Park