Long Description:"he is one of the few survivors of the sailing schooners in the
West coast lumber trade to San Francisco from Washington, Oregon,
and Northern California.
As a lumber schooner
The C.A. Thayer was built by Danish-born Hans D. Bendixsen in
his shipyard, located across the narrows of Humboldt Bay from the
city of Eureka in Northern California. She was named for Clarence
A. Thayer, a partner in the San Francisco-based E.K. Wood Lumber
Company.
Between 1895 and 1912, C.A. 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.
C.A. Thayer is typical of the sort of three-masted schooners
often used in the west coast lumber trade. She is 219 feet in
length and has a cargo capacity of 575,000 board feet (1360 m³).
She carried about half of her load below deck, with the remaining
lumber stacked ten feet high on deck. In port, her small crew of
eight or nine men were also responsible for loading and unloading
the ship. Unloading 75,000 to 80,000 board feet (180 to 190 m³) was
an average day's work.
With the increase in the use of steam power for the lumber
trade, and after sustaining serious damage during a gale, the C.A.
Thayer was retired from the lumber trade in 1912, and converted for
use in the Alaskan salmon fishery.
In the Alaskan salmon fishery
Early each April from 1912 to 1924, C.A. Thayer sailed from San
Francisco for Western Alaska. On board she carried 28-foot gillnet
boats, bundles of barrel staves, tons of salt, and a crew of
fishermen and cannery workers. She then spent the summer anchored
at a fishery camp such as Squaw Creek or Koggiung. Whilst there,
the fishermen worked their nets and the cannery workers packed the
catch on shore. The C.A. Thayer returned to San Francisco each
September, carrying 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, 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.
As a cod fisherman
Between 1925 and 1930, the C.A. Thayer made yearly voyages from
Poulsbo, Washington, to Alaska's Bering Sea cod fishing waters. In
addition to supplies, she carried upwards of 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 the rails, and
then fished standing up, with handlines 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, the
U.S. Army purchased C.A. Thayer from J.E. Shields 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 codfishing. Her final voyage was in
1950.
Restoration
The State of California purchased C.A. Thayer in 1957. After
preliminary restoration in Seattle, Washington, a volunteer crew
sailed her down the coast to San Francisco. The San Francisco
Maritime Museum performed more extensive repairs and refitting, 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 40 years as a museum ship, the C.A. Thayer has again been
restored, a restoration which took three years from 2004, and which
resulted in her temporary removal from her berth at the San
Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Approximately 80% of
the ship's timbers were replaced with new timbers matching the
original wood. The ship sailed back to the Hyde Street Pier on
April 12th, 2007." Wikipedia