Carrie Clark

Date

2008

Authors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Texas Tech University Libraries

Abstract

Ship Name:Carrie Clark; Sailed: 1874-1921; Type: Wood 3-masted; Built by: Waldoboro, Maine by Clark & Sons; Dimensions: 185' x 38' x 24'; Tonnage: 1327 tons.

Description

This photograph was probably taken between 1875 and 1878. During this time Carrie Clark was engaged solely in the California trade. After 1878, the ship became a coal carrier between British Columbia and San Francisco. Owing to the fact that this image does not show the San Francisco coal wharf, it seems a reasonable assumption that the photograph was taken before this time. Ira Augustus Storer was the sole captain under American ownership. Carrie Clark had the dubious distinction of running afoul of the newly-strung cables on the Brooklyn Bridge while they were building that engineering marvel. The ship’s for and main topgallant masts were sheared away while Carrie Clark was being towed up river. Obviously, they were replaced as the ship shows off its main skysail yard in this image. In 1883, Carrie Clark was sold to Germans, renamed Anna, and continued trading for some twenty years across the Atlantic between east coast ports and Europe. Bought again by the Luckenbachs, Carrie Clark was shorn of its rig and converted into a barge. A collision sank the ship in 1921. The square-bowed schooner abaft Carrie Clark is a San Francisco Bay scow schooner. Scow schooners were the eighteen-wheelers of the nineteenth century on the San Francisco Bay. With tens of thousands of horses hauling everything from the milk wagon, the wharf freight wagons, to fancy phaetons, the need for fodder for these huffing and sweating engines was never-ending. The original pastures (potrero in Spanish suggests that the Portrero District was previously pastoral) now occupied with other pursuits, hay had to be brought from Alviso to the south, Vallejo, Stockton or Sacramento to the north or east. Scow schooners hauled the hay—in more ways than one. They also hauled everything and anything from one end of the bay area to the other. Long disappeared, of the army of scow schooners only Alma survives at Hyde Street Pier as a museum ship, where once there were hundreds of these homely little sailing trucks.

Keywords

Carrie Clark (Ship), Ships, Merchant Ships

Citation