Last updated: August 23, 2026
Place
Balclutha's Bow Draft
NPS/J.Woerner
Quick Facts
OPEN TO PUBLIC:
No
At the ship's bow, below the figurehead, is a column of roman numerals painted on the side of the vessel. They start at the top with X-X-I-I, or twenty-two, and go down past the waterline. These numbers measure the distance, in feet, from the water’s surface to the bottom of the hull — a distance known as draft.
Draft tells sailors how deeply a ship sits in the water. That helps prevent a vessel from running aground in shallow waters, or from getting overloaded. A loaded ship has a deeper draft than an empty one.
Nowadays, Balclutha’s draft usually sits around thirteen feet, at the X-I-I-I mark. It would be higher if the ship still carried significantly more cargo or ballast — but for safe sailing, the ship shouldn't be loaded past the 22-foot line.
You can use these same draft markings to imagine just how much space there was for cargo. The top of Balclutha’s lower hold begins by the top of the draft markings and extends several more feet past the waterline. This space is about as wide as a tennis court and nearly as long as the whole vessel.
Just how much stuff could be loaded here? On October 12, 1896, Balclutha left San Francisco for London with 11,202 sacks of barley, 4,179 cases of canned fruit, 44,188 cases of salmon, and 80 gallons of wine. A year later, it returned with 12,017 casks of cement, 303 tons of fuel, nearly 1,000 cases of liquor, wine, and beer – plus hundreds of crates of mustard, olive oil, and cocoa.
In four decades as a merchant ship, Balclutha delivered more types of cargo between the West Coast and ports around the globe. Every inch of the ship's draft would have been maximized. Everything in this ship helped build, feed, and enrich San Francisco – as well California, the United States, and the world.