C.A. Thayer

The C.A. Thayer is a historic museum ship in San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. As the last of her kind, she marked the end of the commercial era of wooden three-masted gaff schooners on the American West Coast. Built of Douglas fir in 1895 in Fairhaven for a San Francisco lumber shipping company, the vessel was named after a partner in the firm. After seventeen years in the lumber trade, the ship switched in 1912 to the salmon run to Alaska, where she remained in service until 1925. She later served in the cod fishery and, during World War II, worked as a Navy lighter. Her last commercial voyage took her to the Bering Sea in 1950, after which she was laid up. In 1957, what was then the National Maritime Museum in San Francisco acquired the C.A. Thayer, and after a restoration she was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. Following another major overhaul between 2003 and 2007, the ship is seaworthy again today, and visitors can tour her as part of the national park.