C.A.Thayer

Built in 1895 at Hans D. Bendixsen's northern California shipyard and named for Clarence A. Thayer, a partner in the San Francisco-based E. K. Wood Lumber Company.

She carried lumber to San Francisco until 1912, when serious damage in a heavy gale ended her days in that trade at an Oakland shipyard. Mr P. Nelson bought her and worked her in the salt-salmon trade until 1924: each spring she brought boats, bundles of barrel staves and tons of salt from San Francisco to western Alaska, spent the summer anchored at Squaw Creek or Koggiung and returned each September with barrels of salted salmon. In winter she carried Northwest fir and Mendocino redwood to Australia, usually returning with coal, sometimes hardwood or copra.

From 1925 to 1930 she made yearly voyages from Poulsbo, Washington, to the Bering Sea cod fishing grounds, and was then laid up in Lake Union, Seattle.

In 1942 the US Army bought her for the war effort, removed her masts and used her as an ammunition barge in British Columbia. After the war she was re-rigged and returned to cod fishing until 1950.

The State of California bought her in 1957 and, after preliminary restoration in Seattle, she sailed down the coast to San Francisco. The San Francisco Maritime Museum carried out more extensive repairs and opened her to the public in 1963. She was transferred to the National Park Service in 1978 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1984.

Today she hosts a range of school education programmes presented by the National Maritime Museum Association.