West Coast lumber trade

[1] The trade was instrumental in founding shipping empires such as the Dollar Steamship Company in which its founder, Captain Robert Dollar, emigrated from Scotland, worked in the lumber camps of Canada and, after moving to San Francisco in 1888 and buying timber tracts, founded a shipping line that extended to China.

[2] As late as the California Gold Rush, New England lumber was still carried 13,000 miles around Cape Horn to San Francisco.

But that started to change when Captain Stephen Smith (of the bark George Henry) established one of the first west coast lumber mill in a redwood forest near Bodega, California, in 1843.

The first lumber mill on the west coast was established by John B. R. Cooper in Rancho El Molino near present-day Forestville, California.

They had shallow drafts for crossing coastal bars, uncluttered deck arrangements for ease of loading, and were especially handy for maneuvering into the tiny, Northern California ports.

[3] The demands of navigating the Redwood Coast, however, and a boom in the lumber industry in the 1860s called for the development of handy two-masted schooners able to operate in the tiny dog-hole ports that served the sawmills.

Many sites along this stretch of coast utilized chutes and wire trapeze rigging to load the small coastal schooners with lumber.

At the time of the construction of the barque Hesperus in 1882, Jackson writes, "the form of the West Coast lumber vessels had become well established and were a radical departure from the New England built ships."

"[6] Jackson also writes that a triangle trade had developed at this time, with "lumber out to Australia, coal to Hawaii, and sugar to San Francisco.

Press coverage states that "these bricks had come north from San Francisco as ballast on lumber ships.

"[7] Eventually, however, steam-powered vessels proved more dependable than sail, and railroads gained greater penetration of the coastal regions.

The last wooden steam lumber schooner built was Esther Johnson constructed by Matthews Shipbuilding, Hoquiam, Washington in 1923 for the A.