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The ships in our park's collection have been moved temporarily due to the Hyde Street Rebuild Project. They are now located at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Visitors are not currently allowed on the ships, but can view them from Mare Island. When the Hyde Street Pier rebuild is finished, the ships will be moved back to Hyde Street Pier.
C.A. Thayer: The Last Pacific Lumber SchoonerC.A. Thayer was built in 1895 as a lumber schooner by Hans D. Bendixsen (1842-1902) in his shipyard near Humboldt Bay, California. Made for the San Francisco-based E.K. Wood Lumber Company, the ship was named for Clarence A. Thayer, an accountant and partner in the firm. From 1895 to 1912, C.A. Thayer carried lumber between Grays Harbor, Washington and San Francisco. The ship also journeyed as far south as Mexico and across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii and Fiji. The ship then served as a salmon trader, a cod fishing vessel, an ammunition barge, and a roadside attraction before becoming a museum ship at what is now San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Hundreds of ships like C.A. Thayer used to sail the Pacific Coast of the United States, but now it is the only one of its kind left. C.A. Thayer Quick Facts
SAFR P93-065 J07.05135 Lumber Schooner (1895-1912)C.A. Thayer was built for carrying up to 575,000 board feet of lumber along the Pacific Coast. The ship’s design addressed challenges unique to the coastal lumber trade. Lumber Ports for Dog HolesPacific lumber mills were often located on top of tall cliffs inside what were called “dog hole ports.” These were ports supposedly only big enough for a dog to turn around and chase its tail. Ships visiting these ports had to be small and highly maneuverable to work around fog, high winds, strong currents, and rocks. C.A. Thayer anchored close to shore, where cables and chutes, lowered from the tops of the cliffs, could reach the ship. Workers attached lumber to these chutes and sent them down towards the vessel. The lumber then slid into the hold through “lumber ports” built into the stern. Half the lumber was stored below deck and half was piled in chains on the main deck, towering 10 feet high. Bald-headed RiggingC.A. Thayer was rigged bald-headed, meaning it did not use top sails. This allowed most work on sails to be done from the deck by a small crew. The bald-headed rig also simplified tacking into the strong westerly winds sailing north. Fore and aft rigging added maneuverability to the ship, as well. A Shallow Draft and Flatter BottomA shallow draft and flatter bottom design enabled C.A. Thayer to “ride” over the sandbars that blocked the mouths of rivers. Ships that could not traverse these bars on their own had to wait for a tugboat to tow them over. Tugs were rare on the West Coast during C.A. Thayer’s time as a lumber carrier, and many ships had to wait a week or more for a tug to arrive. With it's flatter design, C.A. Thayer did not have to wait for a tow, and so was able to travel faster and more efficiently. Loading and unloading ballast between picking up and delivering cargo also took time. A shallow draft and flatter bottom enabled C.A. Thayer to sail back north to its home port without any. (Ballast is any material, typically stones, used to weigh down a ship to maintain its stability at sea.) As efficiently run as it was designed, C. A. Thayer only needed a crew of four able-bodied seamen, two mates, a cook, and the captain. Lumber schooners were ideal to serve on at the time. Short coastal journeys meant more time in port with families. They also allowed for fresher food to be carried and eaten aboard, earning lumber schooners the nickname “feeders.” Crew members, who also loaded and unloaded cargo, could expect more pay, up to $30 a month. Lumber schooner crews often worked together for many journeys, unlike deepwater crews. 
SAFR P93-065 J07.05134 Salt and Salmon (1912-1924)When C.A. Thayer was built in 1895, new steam schooners like Wapama were already delivering lumber up and down the Pacific Coast. Much more powerful and efficient, these vessels gradually took over the trade. By 1912, most sail-powered lumber schooners had been abandoned in mudflats, burned on beaches to recover the metal fastenings in the ships, or sold into new trades. C.A. Thayer was sold to Pete Nelson, who brought the ship into the salted salmon business. Every April from 1912 to 1924, C.A. Thayer sailed from San Francisco to western Alaska transporting 28-foot gill-net boats, wood to make barrels, and tons of salt. The ship anchored at Squaw Creek or Koggiung, where fishermen left in the gill-net boats to catch salmon. When they returned to shore, workers salted the fish to preserve them and packed them in barrels. C.A. Thayer sailed back to San Francisco in September with its hold filled with barrels of salted salmon. Most ships in the trade were left in harbor during the winter months, but during World War I, freight rates were inflated. This made it worthwhile for C.A. Thayer to transport lumber again. During the winters between 1915 and 1919, C.A. Thayer transported Northwest fir and Mendocino redwood to Australia. The trips took two months each way. The ship often returned transporting coal, but sometimes also carried hardwood or copra (the dried meat of a coconut). 
SAFR P93-065 F09.08493 A Floating Factory (1925-1931)C.A. Thayer next served in the cod fishing business under owner and captain John E. Shields. The ship functioned as a moving factory, salting over 6,000 cod a day. C.A. Thayer made yearly voyages from Poulsbo, Washington to the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska. The ship left in early April and returned in September. To survive in remote waters, the ship carried enough supplies to provide for the 30 to 50 men onboard for five months. Starting at 4:30 am each day, 14 fishermen launched their dory fishing boats over the rails of the ship. A fishermen could catch 300 to 500 cod in a five-hour period using handlines dropped over both sides of a boat. When the day’s catch was onboard, a dressing crew of 12 men split, salted, and loaded the fish into the lower hold. The Great Depression hit the salt cod industry, causing C.A. Thayer to be laid up in Lake Union, Seattle, for most of the 1930s. In 1942, the Federal Government requisitioned schooners for military service during World War II. The U.S. Army cut off C.A. Thayer’s masts and used the ship as a munitions barge in British Columbia. After the war, John E. Shields re-purchased C.A. Thayer and many other schooners. The Army had performed much needed maintenance on the ship’s hull, but it was still without masts. Shields removed the masts of another schooner, the Sophie Christenson, and installed them on C.A. Thayer, allowing the ship to sail to the Bering Sea again. C.A. Thayer made its final voyage as a cod fishing vessel in 1950. It was the last commercial sailing vessel to operate on the West Coast. 
NPS Image Museum Ship (1963-present)C.A Thayer was displayed between 1954 and 1957 as a roadside attraction “pirate ship” named Black Shield in Hood Canal near Lilliwaup, Washington. The State of California purchased C.A. Thayer in 1957. After preliminary restoration in Seattle, Washington, a volunteer crew, led by the founders of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, sailed the ship to San Francisco. The San Francisco Maritime Museum performed more extensive repairs and opened C.A. Thayer to the public in 1963. The vessel was transferred from California State Parks to the National Park Service in 1978 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1984. After four different careers, C.A. Thayer is in its fifth career as a museum ship at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Open Transcript Open Descriptive Transcript Transcript[00:11] The Thayer is the last West Coast lumber schooner. I think the last of anything is significant. So many things we discard and then forget about. Now it’s obsolete. We don’t need it. Do you keep it? Do you let it go? The Thayer was built by normal people and sailed by working people. It wasn’t an object of glamour or beauty. It was one of thousands and thousands of things that carried stuff around. [00:42] One of the pictures that I love most of San Francisco is the whole bay is covered with ships, sailing ships. All you see are masts. I mean, you can count literally like 500 ships along the waterfront here. Maritime history is really what the history of the city began as. There wasn’t a road to take in or a train to take in. Being up on a peninsula like it is, really, the water was the only communication that people had from the outside world. [01:13] After the discovery of gold in 1848, California grew rapidly and cities like San Francisco created huge demands for lumber. In the redwood forests of Northern California, along the shores of Humboldt Bay, a prolific shipbuilder named Hans Bendixsen was producing dozens of schooners for the lumber trade. [01:35] Bendixsen and all the other yards of the day, they built ship after ship after ship. [01:40] He would often have one vessel that was just getting the frames laid out, and right next to it was one vessel that was getting planks, and then another vessel that was getting rigged. [01:49] In 1895, the E.K. Wood Lumber Company ordered a three-masted Bendixsen schooner for their growing San Francisco business. Named for E.K. Wood’s brother-in-law and business partner, Clarence, the C.A. Thayer spent the next 17 years hauling lumber along the Pacific Coast and abroad. [02:10] Her history of hauling lumber or they would dramatically load her, get her to the point she was just—I wouldn’t even say floating, probably wallowing would be the term—and then she would wallow back down the coast with her cargo. [02:23] On her maiden voyage, she carried douglas fir over 5,000 miles to the Fiji Islands, and, in the course of her career, made 15 trans-Pacific voyages to Hawai'i, the South Pacific, and Australia. Designed primarily for coastal work, the Thayer regularly sailed from mills in Washington to lumber yards in San Francisco and Southern California. By 1900, new technology was taking over the lumber industry and sailing schooners were replaced by larger and more predictable steam schooners. [03:00] As steam power kind of took over the lumbering trade, one of the last uses of sail power in this country was the fishing industry up in Alaska. [03:11] The Thayer changed careers in 1912, sailing to Bristol Bay, Alaska, every April for 13 years, returning to San Francisco filled with barrels of salted salmon. Sold to the Pacific Coast Codfish Company in 1925, she spent most of the next 25 summers voyaging to the Bering Sea, providing a floating platform for catching and salting codfish. The advent of refrigeration led to the decline of the salt fish industry and, by 1950, the C.A. Thayer was the last operating commercial schooner on the Pacific Coast. [03:47] To be on a sailing vessel like this is a beautiful sight, when there’s no vibration from an engine, no exhaust smell. There’s the creaking and groaning of all the parts and riggings as the vessel rolls. But she just continually rolls very peacefully like this as she is sailing along. When we came home in 1950, we did not know that was going to be the last trip. [04:17] So, cod fishing industry really collapsed and the few boats that were still left around, you know, what do you do with them? Up in Richardson’s Bay there were all sorts of abandoned sailing vessels. I mean, Tiburon was an area where they used to burn old ships to get the metal parts out of them. In Thayer’s case, an entrepreneur up in Washington bought her and exhibited her as a pirate ship laying in the mud and that could have easily been the end. [04:56] Karl Kortum was a chicken farmer from Petaluma, as he always liked to say, and loved ships. I guess he saw how sailing ships were just disappearing. [05:11] Starting with a collection of model ships and sailing artifacts, Karl Kortum founded the San Francisco Maritime Museum in 1951. Purchased by the State of California, the C.A. Thayer was dragged off the mud of Hood Canal, Washington, in 1957. A half-century of hard work had taken its toll and the vessel was towed to a Seattle shipyard where her rotten stern was repaired and new masts and rigging installed. Karl Kortum and an intrepid crew of ship enthusiasts spent two weeks sailing her from Seattle to San Francisco, finally returning the C.A. Thayer to her home as the newest addition to the Maritime Museum. [05:58] She spent the next 40 years as a floating exhibit, sharing her stories of the sea with thousands of visitors and schoolchildren. The vessel was transferred to the National Park Service in 1978, but by 2003, Thayer was in dire need of repairs. She was hauled from the water to an Alameda warehouse, where she spent the next four years undergoing major repairs to her hull and deck. [06:27] It’s one of those great projects that challenges a restorer or preservationist or a shipwright. After we took the planking off to reframe because we took off the external structure, the internal structure gave way. The scale of a wooden vessel decaying, basically all of the frames in the middle of the vessel were gone. [06:53] It wasn’t a production process. So everything was unique. We had to learn it each time. We had to figure out the process. And also we didn’t do it straightforward. To frame a ship with the ship already there is backwards. [07:05] Every frame was carefully removed, reproduced, and reinstalled. So it required major work to get her back into shape. These ships did important things and they left important information behind. And if you kind of use them as an inherent victim of entropy, something is going to biodegrade, no matter what. Then you take a ship from being a stout, proud, fast vessel to a storage thing, to a box of rubble. [07:36] Six years ago, her sister ship, almost an identical twin, the Wawona, was in Washington. The second to last lumber schooner, it was also a Bendixsen-built boat. Both Thayer and Wawona went through a slow, agonizing decay to the point where it’s either replace a lot of it, or it’s going to be gone. [08:00] They love that ship. That was their lumber schooner. But towards the end, the sea port that had her knew they couldn’t care for her properly, and the repairs that had been done were plywood and tarps, and all the things that tell you that the end is near. And ultimately the ship was cut up. Through their good graces and our effort, we obtained several important pieces from the vessel that we have installed on the C.A. Thayer. [08:27] One of the pieces that we have from Wawona is the steering gear, the same size, same builder, literally a bolt-on replacement. The fact that it was another Bendixsen-built boat and a really near-sister-ship, it’s kind of like getting a kidney transplant from a family member. In many ways, Wawona lives on; parts of her live on. [08:51] Returning to Alameda in 2015, the restoration of the C.A. Thayer continued. While out of the water, a new gammoning knee was carved and mounted, followed by the installation of the bowsprit. New chain plates were installed, deck rails were finished, and her hull was caulked and painted. Back in the water, three new masts were stepped through freshly cut holes and held in place with temporary rigging. Back in San Francisco, the final step is restoring the original rigging, taking advantages of the unique resources of San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. [09:38] We have a lot of photographs of this ship. We have drawings by the designer of similar vessels. We fully utilized every aspect of this part in doing this rebuild, trying to match what was done in 1895. Everybody who has been involved with this had to show a lot of responsibility for doing things the way they were done. [10:07] So we have the last one, a stock original model, 1895 wooden lumber schooner. [10:14] You know, if you can convince somebody actually to come down and stand next to it, a lot of people get it. The fact that there aren’t a lot of hand-built wooden things that big hanging around, it’s an unusual expression of great craft.
Descriptive Transcript[00:01] [Sounds of waves and birds; keyboard background music.] [00:11] [Voice of Phil Erwin, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park] The Thayer is the last West Coast lumber schooner. I think the last of anything is significant. So many things we discard and then forget about. Now it’s obsolete. We don’t need it. Do you keep it? Do you let it go? [Sounds of birds squawking.] The Thayer was built by normal people and sailed by working people. It wasn’t an object of glamour or beauty. It was one of thousands and thousands of things that carried stuff around. [Sound of bell ringing.] [00:42] [Voice of Courtney Andersen, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park] One of the pictures that I love most of San Francisco is the whole bay is covered with ships, sailing ships. All you see are masts. I mean, you can count literally like 500 ships along the waterfront here. [Sounds of birds screeching.] Maritime history is really what the history of the city began as. There wasn’t a road to take in or a train to take in. Being up on a peninsula like it is, really, the water was the only communication that people had from the outside world. [01:13] [Voice of narrator.] After the discovery of gold in 1848, California grew rapidly and cities like San Francisco created huge demands for lumber. [Background guitar music picks up.] In the redwood forests of Northern California, along the shores of Humboldt Bay, a prolific shipbuilder named Hans Bendixsen was producing dozens of schooners for the lumber trade. [01:35] [Voice of Phil] Bendixsen and all the other yards of the day, they built ship after ship after ship. [01:40] [Voice of Courtney] He would often have one vessel that was just getting the frames laid out, and right next to it was one vessel that was getting planks, and then another vessel that was getting rigged. [01:49] [Voice of Narrator] In 1895, the E.K. Wood Lumber Company ordered a three-masted Bendixsen schooner for their growing San Francisco business. Named for E.K. Wood’s brother-in-law and business partner, Clarence, the C.A. Thayer spent the next 17 years hauling lumber along the Pacific Coast and abroad. [02:10] [Voice of Interviewee] Her history of hauling lumber or they would dramatically load her, get her to the point she was just—I wouldn’t even say floating, probably wallowing would be the term—and then she would wallow back down the coast with her cargo. [02:23] [Voice of Narrator] On her maiden voyage, she carried douglas fir over 5,000 miles to the Fiji Islands, and, in the course of her career, made 15 trans-Pacific voyages to Hawai'i, the South Pacific, and Australia. Designed primarily for coastal work, the Thayer regularly sailed from mills in Washington to lumber yards in San Francisco and Southern California. [Sounds of chugging machinery.] By 1900, new technology was taking over the lumber industry and sailing schooners were replaced by larger and more predictable steam schooners. [Sound of ship’s horn over chugging machinery.] [03:00] [Voice of Interviewee] As steam power kind of took over the lumbering trade, one of the last uses of sail power in this country was the fishing industry up in Alaska. [03:11] [Voice of Narrator] [Jaunty, nautical background music.] The Thayer changed careers in 1912, sailing to Bristol Bay, Alaska, every April for 13 years, returning to San Francisco filled with barrels of salted salmon. Sold to the Pacific Coast Codfish Company in 1925, she spent most of the next 25 summers voyaging to the Bering Sea, providing a floating platform for catching and salting codfish. The advent of refrigeration led to the decline of the salt fish industry and, by 1950, the C.A. Thayer was the last operating commercial schooner on the Pacific Coast. [03:47] [Peaceful woodwind music] [Voice of Captain Ed Shields] To be on a sailing vessel like this is a beautiful sight, when there’s no vibration from an engine, no exhaust smell. There’s the creaking and groaning of all the parts and riggings as the vessel rolls. But she just continually rolls very peacefully like this as she is sailing along. When we came home in 1950, we did not know that was going to be the last trip. [04:17] [Solemn background music] [Voice of Interviewee] So, cod fishing industry really collapsed and the few boats that were still left around, you know, what do you do with them? Up in Richardson’s Bay there were all sorts of abandoned sailing vessels. I mean, Tiburon was an area where they used to burn old ships to get the metal parts out of them. [Sound of crackling fire.] In Thayer’s case, an entrepreneur up in Washington bought her and exhibited her as a pirate ship laying in the mud and that could have easily been the end. [04:56] [Upbeat guitar music.] [Voice of Interviewee] Karl Kortum was a chicken farmer from Petaluma, as he always liked to say, and loved ships. I guess he saw how sailing ships were just disappearing. [05:11] [Voice of Narrator] Starting with a collection of model ships and sailing artifacts, Karl Kortum founded the San Francisco Maritime Museum in 1951. [Sounds of waves.] Purchased by the State of California, the C.A. Thayer was dragged off the mud of Hood Canal, Washington, in 1957. A half-century of hard work had taken its toll and the vessel was towed to a Seattle shipyard where her rotten stern was repaired and new masts and rigging installed. Karl Kortum and an intrepid crew of ship enthusiasts spent two weeks sailing her from Seattle to San Francisco, finally returning the C.A. Thayer to her home as the newest addition to the Maritime Museum. [05:58] She spent the next 40 years as a floating exhibit, sharing her stories of the sea with thousands of visitors and schoolchildren. [Muffled sounds of a teacher and children on a field trip.] The vessel was transferred to the National Park Service in 1978, but by 2003, Thayer was in dire need of repairs. She was hauled from the water to an Alameda warehouse, where she spent the next four years undergoing major repairs to her hull and deck. [Sounds of tools and machines whirring.] [06:27] [Voices of Interviewees] It’s one of those great projects that challenges a restorer or preservationist or a shipwright. [Sounds of hammering on wood.] After we took the planking off to reframe because we took off the external structure, the internal structure gave way. The scale of a wooden vessel decaying, basically all of the frames in the middle of the vessel were gone. [06:53] [Muffled sounds of workers talking.] It wasn’t a production process. So everything was unique. We had to learn it each time. We had to figure out the process. And also we didn’t do it straightforward. [Sounds of hammering.] To frame a ship with the ship already there is backwards. [07:05] Every frame was carefully removed, reproduced, and reinstalled. So it required major work to get her back into shape. These ships did important things and they left important information behind. And if you kind of use them as an inherent victim of entropy, something is going to biodegrade, no matter what. Then you take a ship from being a stout, proud, fast vessel to a storage thing, to a box of rubble. [Muffled sounds of workers talking and working.] [07:36] [Sounds of waves and birds.] [Voice of Interviewee] Six years ago, her sister ship, almost an identical twin, the Wawona, was in Washington. The second to last lumber schooner, it was also a Bendixsen-built boat. Both Thayer and Wawona went through a slow, agonizing decay to the point where it’s either replace a lot of it, or it’s going to be gone. [08:00] [Voice of Interviewee] They love that ship. That was their lumber schooner. But towards the end, the sea port that had her knew they couldn’t care for her properly, and the repairs that had been done were plywood and tarps, and all the things that tell you that the end is near. And ultimately the ship was cut up. Through their good graces and our effort, we obtained several important pieces from the vessel that we have installed on the C.A. Thayer. [08:27] [Voice of Courtney Andersen] One of the pieces that we have from Wawona is the steering gear, the same size, same builder, literally a bolt-on replacement. The fact that it was another Bendixsen-built boat and a really near-sister-ship, it’s kind of like getting a kidney transplant from a family member. In many ways, Wawona lives on; parts of her live on. [08:51] [Upbeat guitar background music] [Voice of Narrator] Returning to Alameda in 2015, the restoration of the C.A. Thayer continued. While out of the water, a new gammoning knee was carved and mounted, followed by the installation of the bowsprit. New chain plates were installed, deck rails were finished, and her hull was caulked and painted. Back in the water, three new masts were stepped through freshly cut holes and held in place with temporary rigging. Back in San Francisco, the final step is restoring the original rigging, taking advantages of the unique resources of San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. [09:38] [Voice of Interviewee] We have a lot of photographs of this ship. We have drawings by the designer of similar vessels. We fully utilized every aspect of this part in doing this rebuild, trying to match what was done in 1895. Everybody who has been involved with this had to show a lot of responsibility for doing things the way they were done. [10:07] [Voice of Interviewee] So we have the last one, a stock original model, 1895 wooden lumber schooner. [10:14] [Voice of Interviewee] You know, if you can convince somebody actually to come down and stand next to it, a lot of people get it. The fact that there aren’t a lot of hand-built wooden things that big hanging around, it’s an unusual expression of great craft. [Sound of waves crashing on beach.]
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C.A. Thayer, The Last of the Lumber Schooners documents the history of the ship from it's days sailing across the Pacific to it's acquisition by the National Park Service and it's restoration with San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. |
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Last updated: June 20, 2025