Bulk Trades, the
Date
2008
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Texas Tech University Libraries
Abstract
Photographs of sailing ships engaged in fishing, salmon, lumber, grain, coal trades from west coast ports such as San Francisco, Portland, Seattle.
Description
In these files, there have been numerous photographs showing ships engaged in the fishing trade,
the salmon trade, and the lumber trade. The last days of commercial sail were filled with three
problems that grew to overwhelming proportions: a labor problem, a paying freight problem
(how does the ship pay its way?), and the biggest problem of them all—competition from more
efficient systems, whether rail or powered ship. When compound steam engines became the
norm, rather than the exception, commercial sail could no longer compete with known arrival
schedules and rapid turn-around time. Instead, sail could compete best with bulk cargoes where
free warehousing (several months in the hold of a sailing ship) was the norm. From the 1880s
through the 1920s, another persistent challenge was to find a crew with a skill set commensurate
with the rigors of a large sailing vessel. The smart able-bodied sailors opted for the easier life in
steam. While there was no want of capable officers, the lack of competent sailors became
critical well before 1900. In a brief article I read from the San Francisco Call Bulletin around
the turn of the century, there was a brief newsy note about a well-known master of a big 4-
masted bark that was “day sailing” around the Bay trying to get his newly-hired (shanghaied?)
crew into some sort of sail-drill shape before venturing forth on a voyage. While that kind of
training is laudable, it is also revealing of the lack of sailing fundamentals available wharfside in
latter-day sail.
What were the cargoes available to sail in its latter days? Photograph 106a, a colored postcard,
is illustrative. Front and center is a French-built bark at the coal wharves in San Francisco south
of Market Street. Sailing ships routinely carried coal up and down the west coast and across the
Pacific and it was a paying “retirement” trade for older sailing vessels. The historic clipper
Dashing Wave was a particularly fetching coal tramp in its latter days and there are several
photographs of this clipper in and around San Francisco hauling coal long after the glory days.
Ironic that sailing ships carried the fuel that nourished the boilers of steam engines that were
putting the windships out of business. However, such was the reality.
Grain was another bulk cargo, and odd as it may seem now, California was once a world
breadbasket for grains of several kinds. Wooden ships carried the wheat through the 1870s and
1880s back to the east coast. Starting in the 1870s, European (primarily British, but not
exclusively so) sailing ships loaded wheat for Europe and by the end of the 1880s dominated the
trade.
Photographs 106b and 106c are of another boom bulk cargo that lasted well into the twentieth
century and still prevails—lumber. Photograph 106b shows Port Blakely, Washington, awash in
large latter-day sailing ships loading finished lumber for ports all around the world. The Hall
Brothers maintained an important shipyard co-located with Port Blakely. Sailing ships hauled
finished and semi-finished lumber to Hawaii, Australia, and all over the Pacific. The streams of
lumber ships after the 1906 earthquake and fire were prodigious. Photograph 106c (taken 26
July 1910) reveals, even though faded, large sailing ships (and a steamer to the right) loading
lumber from the Hastings Mill at Vancouver, British Columbia.
Keywords
Merchant Ships, Ships