The schooner has been preserved and open to the public at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park since 1963.

She is one of the last survivors of the sailing schooners in the West coast lumber trade to San Francisco from Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.

Thayer was built by Danish-born Hans Ditlev Bendixsen in his shipyard, located across the narrows of Humboldt Bay from the city of Eureka in Northern California.

Thayer is typical of the sort of three-masted schooners often used in the west coast lumber trade.

On board she carried 28-foot (8.5 m) gillnet boats, bundles of barrel staves, tons of salt, and a crew of fishermen and cannery workers.

Vessels in the salt-salmon trade usually laid up during the winter months, but when World War I inflated freight rates, C.A.

Thayer made yearly voyages from Poulsbo, Washington, to Alaska's Bering Sea cod-fishing waters.

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.

After World War II, Shields bought his ship back from the Army, fitted her with masts once again, and returned her to cod fishing.

After preliminary restoration in Seattle, Washington, a volunteer crew sailed her down the coast to San Francisco.

(In the 1956 movie Julie, there is a scene where a man is sitting on an airplane reading a San Francisco newspaper.

In Nov. 2016 she was moved to Alameda to be painted, get new booms and gaffs, and have three masts and a bowsprit installed by the Bay Ship and Yacht Company.