What the heck is a Doghole Schooner and what does it have to do with Mendocino County history? Let me explain. It’s your local history lesson for the day.
Once, 130 years ago, there were more than 30 shipping ports along the coast. They were so small that the mental image used was of a dog turning around to settle down on the floor. These ports were so tight it was joked a dog would have trouble turning around, hence dog holes. Very tiny short wharves or cable loading systems got lumber on to the boats.
And with tight space small sailing ships with two masts were created to haul finished lumber from sawmills to bigger marketplaces. Later converted to steam they also brought merchandise to the coast. And the best place to get a Doghole schooner? Buy one from Mr. Matt Turner’s shipyard in San Francisco.
Born in 1825 Turner learned his ship building skills on the Great Lakes. He earned enough money mining during the Gold Rush to purchase his first ship on a trip back east, and sailed it around the Horn and South America to begin hauling lumber on the coast.
He developed the habit of going back east and bringing a new ship west every four years. He took one brig and sailed north and fished Pacific Cod which he sold at a profit. He bought 25 tons of salt to cure the fish, sailed to the North Pacific and caught 20 tons of fish and turned them into Salt Cod and made $6,000.
Finally by 1875 he amassed enough money to open a shipyard and focus on building 56 vessels designed for coastal shipping that were exceptionally ship worthy. Then he moved his shipyard to Benicia in 1883 and built another 145 vessels before retiring in 1902 at age 77. He died while building his own steam yacht in 1909.
While he developed a speciality in building yachts he also built brigs and schooners. He built ships for the Hawaiian sugar trade and the Tahitian packet trade and a boat for missionaries spreading the word of God in the South Pacific.
Among the schooners he built to serve the Mendocino lumber trade perhaps the most famous had a great tale. The “J.C.Ford” was built for the Mendocino Lumber Company in 1882. While on a trip, 300 miles east of Hawaii, a falling meteor blasted the main mast and staysail and caught everything on fire. The deck coverings, masts and sails were thrown in the ocean to put the flames out, then rescued.The pieces of them meteor were said to resemble burning lava.The “J.C.Ford” sailed afterward and met its end in 1883 near Grays Harbor WA the cargo of lime it was hauling caught fire, igniting by water seeping into the hold and it sank.
Turner’s Doghole schooners were 80’ to 90’ long with two or three masts before they were converted to steam engines. After careers aa lumber transporters many, like the “Antelope,” were remodeled into fish canneries for salmon. The “Newark,” which used to load firewood at Russian Gulch on the coast for sale to San Francisco households, became a sardine reduction plant. His “Seven Sisters” stopped often in Point Arena but was crushed by ice in Alaskan waters in 1906.
If history fans would like to know more about this topic Francis Jackson self-published a book in 1969 called “Doghole Schooners”. The author explored the designs, the men who built them, the captains who sailed them, ports of call, ownership and wrecks of almost 300 ships. As an example 22 ships are listed as having pulled into the Whitesboro/Salmon Creek shipping point and you can read details about every ship. The book can be found in reference collections in libraries and in museum archives and you can read it in those locations if you love ships and Doghole ports.
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