Legacy of Gas Light
A traditional Scow Schooner replica from the Gold Rush Era is currently operating on San Francisco Bay for charter. Want to step back in time and see what a traditional tall ship is like under sail? Call Bay Lights Charters!
There were over 600 of this style of boat on SF Bay in the late 1800’s bringing supplies like hay, lumber, and eggs to the developing city we all LOVE today. This is a brief history of that era and why it is important to keep a vessel like Gas Light working today so modern folk can be a part of living history.
The traditional Scow Schooners played a vital role in the California Gold Rush and the development of San Francisco. These flat-bottomed vessels were essential for transporting goods, people, and gold from the mines to the city and beyond. The Scow Schooners were designed to navigate the shallow waters and strong tidal currents of the San Francisco Bay, making them the perfect choice for the region's transportation needs. Gas Light, a modern replica of a Scow Schooner, continues to operate on the San Francisco Bay, keeping the legacy of these historic vessels alive.
Scow schooners, a type of stable, flat-bottomed sailing vessel, played a significant role in the development of San Francisco as a commercial and maritime hub, particularly during the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s.
The California Gold Rush of 1849 was a pivotal moment in the state's history, attracting thousands of people in search of fortune. The Scow Schooners played a crucial role in supporting this influx by transporting supplies such as hay, lumber, and food to the developing city of San Francisco. They were also used to transport gold from the mines to the city, contributing to the region's economic growth
The Gold Rush led to rapid population growth, economic development, and the eventual statehood of California. Scow schooners played a crucial role in the Gold Rush by providing a reliable and efficient means of transporting people and goods to and from the gold fields, primarily through the San Francisco Bay, which was the primary gateway for miners and their supplies. These vessels were well-suited for the task due to their ability to navigate the shallow waters and strong tidal currents of the bay, making them the most common vessels used for transportation during the Gold Rush. They were used to transport everything from mining equipment to food, supplies, and even the gold itself, becoming a symbol of the era. After the Gold Rush, scow schooners continued to flourish and played an important role in the development of California. Some 700 scow schooners were built for not only the Gold Rush but also to continue the movement of goods and people from the ocean, bays, and flourishing cities to the inland farms and ranches
These vessels were first developed in the 1850s to navigate the unique conditions of San Francisco Bay, including shallow waters and strong tidal currents. They were essential for transporting a wide range of goods, from lumber to oysters, and were the predominant workaday craft on the bay, with approximately 250 sailing scows in the area by 1880. The scow schooners were crucial in driving the initial economy of early San Francisco, serving as the primary means of transporting miners, supplies, and gold during the Gold Rush. It is estimated that over 700 scow schooners were built in the Bay Area around that time, making them an essential part of the region's economy. The last sailing scow schooner was built in 1906, and by the 1920s, most scows had been rigged down to one mast. Today, scow schooners are a rare sight on the San Francisco Bay, with only a few remaining in operation, such as the modern replica Gas Light, which continues to keep the legacy of these historic vessels alive. The preservation and operation of vessels like Gas Light are important for honoring the maritime heritage of the San Francisco Bay and providing insights into the region's rich maritime history.
Scow schooners were unique during the Gold Rush due to their flat-bottomed design and shallow draft, which allowed them to navigate the shallow waters and strong tidal currents of the San Francisco Bay with ease. This made them the most common vessels used for transporting people and goods to and from the gold fields. Their ability to carry heavy cargo and navigate in challenging waters set them apart from other traditional schooners and ships of that time. Scow schooners were specifically designed to meet the demands of the Gold Rush, making them an integral part of the transportation network during that period
During the Gold Rush, scow schooners faced several challenges due to the nature of their operations. Some of these challenges included:
1- Navigating Shallow Waters and Strong Tidal Currents: The San Francisco Bay presented difficult navigational conditions, with shallow waters and strong tidal currents. Scow schooners, with their flat bottom and shallow draft, were well-suited to navigate these challenging waters, but it still posed a significant challenge
2-Transporting Heavy Cargo: Scow schooners were used to transport a variety of heavy cargo, including mining equipment, food, supplies, and even the gold itself. The heavy load capacity required careful navigation and handling, especially in the bay's demanding conditions
3-Competition and Rising Prices: During the early years of the Gold Rush, prices for small craft, including scow schooners, rose sharply as the demand for transportation capacity increased. This led to intense competition and rising costs for acquiring and maintaining these vessels
4-Physical Demands on Crew: The crew of scow schooners faced physical demands related to loading and unloading cargo, as well as the challenging conditions of seafaring. However, it was noted that scow sailors generally made more money than their deepwater counterparts and had better food provisions
Despite these challenges, scow schooners played a vital role in the transportation network during the Gold Rush, contributing to the economic and social development of the region
Gas Light, a modern replica of a Scow Schooner, is a testament to the enduring legacy of these historic vessels. Built in 1990 in Sausalito, California, Gas Light is constructed of modern materials, with a strong steel hull and spacious interior. It is operated by Bay Lights Charters, offering cruises year-round on the San Francisco Bay. The vessel's design and operation serve as a link to the past, keeping the tradition of the Scow Schooners alive
The importance of preserving a vessel like Gas Light lies in its historical significance and its role in honoring the maritime heritage of the San Francisco Bay. By maintaining and operating this modern replica, it allows people to experience and appreciate the legacy of the Scow Schooners and their impact on the development of the region. Furthermore, it serves as an educational resource, providing insights into the maritime history of the Gold Rush era and the transportation challenges faced during that time.
In conclusion, the traditional Scow Schooners were integral to the development of San Francisco and the success of the California Gold Rush. The continued operation of vessels like Gas Light not only honors this important heritage but also provides a unique opportunity for people to connect with the history of the region. Preserving and operating these historic replicas ensures that the legacy of the Scow Schooners remains an enduring part of San Francisco's maritime identity.
want more info? Check out this book:
Want an even deeper dive? Follow this link:
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?brand=ucpress&chunk.id=d0e10615&docId=ft758007r3&toc.id=d0e10615
here is an excerpt:
Gold-Rush Maritime Trade
Pastoral California's rudimentary economy could not begin to supply the sudden influx of gold seekers. Until the mid-1850s, even food supplies had to be imported. Provisions came from China, Australia, Chile, and the eastern United States, but they were all three to six months sailing time to California. Hawaii was only three to five weeks away, and had already developed commercial agriculture to provision whaling ships, which had concentrated in the Pacific by the 1840s. In 1850, 469 ships arrived at San Francisco from Hawaii, their trade valued at $380,000. But after 1851, Oregon supplied California's agricultural imports; Oregon was less than half the sailing time away, and its products were cheaper and better China continued to send foods preferred by Chinese emigrants, Hawaii shifted to tropical products, especially sugar, and the Pacific Northwest later became an important supplier of lumber and coal.[14]
By 1856 San Francisco had become a well-built and settled city of fireproof masonry commercial buildings, extensive piers, planked streets, and handsome residential blocks. For lack of local supply, bricks had been imported from New Zealand and Tasmania and granite from Hong Kong, and prefabricated corrugated iron buildings had come from Britain, Asia, and Australia. The demand for lumber quickly outran the capacity of existing California sawmills, and lumber was imported from the East Coast until 1855—eighty million board feet in 1852.[15]
San Francisco builders valued coastal redwood for its long, straight grain and resistance to fire. Stands of redwood in the Oakland hills and in the Santa Cruz Mountains had been exploited since Hispanic times, but the largest stands of redwoods occupied a four-hundred-mile coastal belt about thirty miles deep stretching from the north shore of San Francisco Bay to the Oregon border By 1852, sawmills were turning out lumber at Humboldt Bay and along the Mendocino coast. Much of this cut went to San Francisco, but there were foreign exports as well: by 1854, Humboldt Bay was shipping lumber to Australia, and later to China, Hawaii, Chile, and Tahiti.[16]
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Navigation along the redwood coast was hazardous. Humboldt Bay offered a protected anchorage, but heavy seas broke over a shallow sandbar at the entrance. Along the eighty-five-mile Mendocino coast, lumber mills were sited on steep bluffs above narrow estuaries, where often the only practical way to deliver lumber to a moored ship was by skidding it down a wooden chute slung from cables. Surging tides, fogs, and submerged rocks made navigation into these "dog-hole" ports dangerous. Steam power, which gave captains better control, would not be fitted to coastal lumber schooners until the 1880s.[17]
To meet the special demands of the traffic, shipyards along the West Coast began delivering handy, flat-bottomed, broad-beamed, single-decked sailing schooners of one hundred tons or so beginning in the 1850s. These craft had oversize hatches for quick loading, and could carry as much lumber above deck as below. Deck loads were chained down to prevent dangerous shifting during the voyage. Broad-beamed hulls made the schooners stable even when empty so that they could return northward safely without cargoes.[18]
Forty-niners emigrating by way of Cape Horn cleared eastern ports of old ships, and the fast clipper designs that had evolved by the early 1840s now dominated a burst of new construction that briefly eclipsed steam and made America's merchant marine a rival to that of Great Britain. The new clippers had narrow hulls and long, concave bows that cut easily through the sea. Above water, their long, black, flush-decked hulls, often accented by a narrow stripe of white or color, had a sleek, racy look. Clippers spread very large sail areas, and their captains were willing to risk sprung masts and snapped yards in gale-force winds in order to gain a fast passage. The clippers' sailing rigs required large crews; poorly paid, the men were hard to manage, and their officers frequently enforced orders physically. Until well into 1851 it was hard to keep a crew from deserting to the mines at San Francisco, and shipping agents recruited men by offering high wages, or by shanghaiing them.[19]
The clippers' impressive performances were aided by the publication of Matthew Maury's charts of ocean winds and currents, which showed that the fastest course under sail was not always the shortest in miles. By following Maury's directions, captains reduced their sailing times to California by forty days or so, whether their ships were clippers or not.[20]
The clippers' hollow lines and vee-shaped bottoms limited their cargo capacity to perhaps half that of a fuller-bodied ship, and their operating expenses were high. In 1850—51, when high-priority freight rates to California were as much as sixty dollars a ton, or one dollar per cubic foot, a single voyage could repay more than the clipper had cost; but freight rates slipped to thirty dollars a ton by 1853, and to $7.50 a ton by 1858, half of the rate that clippers needed to break even. After the Civil War, America's wooden-hulled merchant marine entered a long decline, and British iron-hulled sailing ships dominated California's growing wheat trade with Liverpool.[21]
The scow defined
The term ‘scow’ is poorly defined among maritime historians, just as it was among contemporaries for whom the finer points of maritime technology lay within the eye of the beholder. Those who built, owned, inspected, or insured such vessels are the best authorities and it is to them that we turn for the most definitive description. The most thorough descriptors come from the Board of Lake Underwriters, a primary Great Lake insurance conglomerate that, like Lloyds of London and later the American Bureau of Shipping, provided inspection services for those that underwrote marine insurance. Their 1876 Rules for the Construction, Inspection, and Characterization of Sail and Steam Vessels was specific to the Great Lakes:
Scows, and barges, or other vessels of box model, characterized by straightness and squareness of body,–by corners at the bilges and ends; or, of extraordinary fullness of bottom, the radius of the moulding of the bilge … or, the internal admeasurement under the main or upper-deck exceeding seventy eight per cent. Of the capacity given by a square figure of the same principle dimensions, (length, breadth, and depth), if framed, not cross-planked, and otherwise built by standards, may be classed up to, but not above B1, on account of unseaworthy form.2
A simpler definition of the scow was provided in Merchant Vessels of the United States (1885) and is illustrated in Figure 2:
The scow is a vessel used in the shoal waters of nearly all the States, but principally on the [Great] Lakes. Scows are built with flat bottoms and square bilges, but some of them have the ordinary schooner bow. They are fitted with one, two, and three masts, and are called scow-sloop or scow-schooner, according to the rig they carry. Some of them carry bowsprits. … The distinctive line between the scow and regular-built schooner is, in the case of some large vessels, quite obscure, but would seem to be determined by the shape of the bilge, the scow having in all cases the angular bilge instead of the curve (futtock) bilge of the ordinary vessel.3
Figure 2. The United States government provided plates illustrating vessel types and rigs in its annual Merchant Vessels of the United States (Washington, 1889, Figures 16 and 17). The scow sloop and schooner were considered broadly distributed nationwide, but especially concentrated on the Great Lakes.
Note: These images are in the public domain.
Part of the definitional confusion in America is due to the fact that the enrollment documents were compiled by customs officials who were, until the establishment of a strong, independent professional civil service in 1883, appointed by each successive federal administration. Appointed customs officials in each port might or might not retain the clerks of a prior administration and so the consistent use of specialized maritime definitions is sometimes weak.4 Hence, some vessels identified as a scow in one record could – upon reenrollment for change of home port, owner, or significant rebuild – be listed as regular-built (meaning a vessel with no hard chine or square bilge). This inconsistency is made clear when virtually identical sister ships from the same builder, enrolled at the same port were variously classified as scows or regular-built vessels.
The term ‘scow’ only describes a hull type, and rigs varied. Hence, there were scow sloops, scow schooners, scow barques, and scow barquentines. Steam and motor scows also developed in the nineteenth century and became common by 1900. Versions of the hard-chined or square-bilged watercraft were developed and known by many different names among cultures worldwide.
Based on contemporary definitions, it is safe to identify three primary variations of the scow hull design: firstly, the ‘full scow’, a vessel that had the angular bilge along the entire length of its sides; secondly, the ‘half scow’, that had the angular bilge along only part of its sides, the bow or stern being similar to that of the ‘regular-built schooner’ hull; and thirdly, those hulls that, although not clearly exhibiting the angular bilge, where so flat-floored that they were considered to be scows by contemporary observers. The first of these two classifications can be confirmed by an examination of the descriptive segments of the Inland Lloyds and Lake Underwriters insurance registers. The terms ‘scow’ and ‘half scow’ appear there, as do indications that a particular vessel had a ‘scow stern’ or ‘scow bottom’.5 Additionally, some unusual rounding in the bow led to the descriptive ‘barrel bow’ or ‘spoon bow’ scow which preceded the Great Lakes ‘whaleback’ design of Alexander McDougal nearly a half century later.6
The complexity of scow construction varied greatly. But from personal examination of existing examples of scows or their remains in the United States and New Zealand, it is clear that relative to the construction techniques applied to regular-built vessels, scows as a class exhibit fewer compound curves and therefore can justifiably be described as less complex to build than a regular-built or V-bottom vessel. This is the origin of the folklore that any barn builder could construct a sailing scow over the winter and sail it over the summer, creating an opportunity for those with very limited capital to enter the shipping business. Since the same folklore held that few Great Lakes shipbuilders built from plans, this perception popularized the idea of vertical integration in Great Lakes agriculture, mining, and forest products trades. In other words, a farmer with some carpentry skills could build a scow over the winter, thus allowing him to take the products of his winter logging operations to a major market port come spring and then repeat the process with his farm produce in the late summer and autumn. Some evidence of enrolled vessels fitting this description – i.e. one-time builds by those naïve of marine architecture and navigation – have been identified on the Great Lakes. Researching the careers of the 621 sailing scows for which a builder could be substantiated through enrollment, registration, or insurance documents, 22 per cent list builders that produced only one vessel.
More convincing evidence supports those with considerable maritime knowledge – mariners working ashore during the winter, but with limited capital – striking out on their own by building scows for specific trades, then reinvesting the earned profits in other vessels, including larger regular-built vessels, able to undertake longer trips with more valuable cargoes and generating significantly increased revenue. The oft-repeated pattern was for a mariner to build a scow as their first vessel, then use the profits generated by this vessel to build a small fortune when economic conditions favored expansion in maritime trade. There are a number of references to capital-poor nineteenth century entrepreneurs on the Great Lakes frontier using the scow to start shipping companies, some of whom later achieved prominence as ship owners.7 Researching the 621 individual Great Lakes sailing scows for which a builder’s name was established, 25 per cent of them had both an ownership stake and mastered the vessels they built. Another 17 per cent built and had either an ownership or master’s role in the vessels they built. There is clearly a strong correlation between mariners building scows during the frontier and early market economy periods, particularly in the booming decades of the 1840s through the 1860s when harbor improvements were still in their infancy.
In this context, the relatively low capital needed to build a scow made it a reasonable investment for the enterprising individual, even if he had only rudimentary experience in shipbuilding. Basically, if good timber stock was available locally at little or no cost, the primary expenses in constructing the scow would come from the cost of sails and equipment, iron for key fasteners, and any of the supplies and amenities needed for the comfort and safety of the crew on their first few trips. If the owner were to hire the scow built, the cost of labor and timber would increase costs substantially.
The primary design difference between scows and regular-built vessels was in the shape of their bottoms. Scows had flat, square bottoms, regular-built hulls had fairer lines with a V-shaped entry, bottom, and run that made them more weatherly. Scows were reputed to have had a fair turn of speed with wind from behind or on the quarter, but were less handy and capable of pointing up toward the wind than their more graceful counterparts with a deeper ‘V’ hull. By the mid-nineteenth century both types in North America and New Zealand used centerboards to increase their ability to sail into the wind.8
The most important factors that influenced a contemporary investor to construct a scow rather than a regular-built vessel were fourfold. Firstly, the flat-bottomed scows were easier to manoeuvre in shallow and largely unimproved lakes, bays, and harbors. Secondly, the flat bottoms allowed these vessels to safely ground upon shores, shoals, sand bars, beaches, and mud banks with considerably less potential for damage than the V-shaped bottom would afford. Thirdly, the square holds allowed them to carry the largest possible cargo with the maximum of available space for their tonnage, thereby also decreasing the amount of customs duties paid on the cargo in comparison to other vessel types. Fourthly, they could be quickly and relatively inexpensively constructed using materials available locally
Here is a video that explains the design of a scow schooner by Captain Steve of Bay Model Sailing Club: Scow Schooner design explained by Capt Steve of Bay Lights Charters This video provides insights into the unique design and characteristics of a scow schooner, offering a visual understanding of these historical vessels.