The new tall ship “Matthew Turner” sets sail for its inaugural launch in Sausalito on Saturday. The name “Matthew Turner,” given the first wood tall ship built in the San Francisco Bay Area in 100 years, honors the prolific Benicia ship builder. This vessel is patterned after Turner’s record-holding “Galilee.” (Photo by Donna Beth Weilenman/Martinez News Gazette)

First wooden tall ship built in San Francisco Bay Area in 100 years

By Donna Beth Weilenman
Martinez News Gazette
Special to the Benicia Herald

As bands played an estimated 1,000 people watched on land and on watercraft in Richardson Bay, the Matthew Turner finally touched water, leaving the shores of Sausalito Saturday afternoon.
The brigantine is the first wooden tall ship built in the San Francisco Bay Area in 100 years, and it’s named for the legendary prolific American designer and builder whose shipyard for years was in Benicia.
His design for his record-setting Galilee, built in 1891, is the inspiration for the new Matthew Turner, built by volunteers under the watchful eye and guidance of Alan Olson, executive director of Educational Tall Ship, which with its partner Call of the Sea, has been offering scholarly, on-board programs to school children on the smaller 2-foot schooner Seaward that was decorated in signal flags the day of the launch.
Since the 1980s, Olson has wanted to offer classes on a larger ship. When the Hawaiian Chieftain, built along the lines of an 19th century merchant ship, was sold in 2004 and taken from Sausalito to Cape Cod, Mass., Olson also longed to get a new vessel constructed so the Bay Area to have its own tall ship again. He kept that dream even when the Hawaiian Chieftain was bought by Grays Harbor Historical Seaport and was brought to a new West Coast home in Aberdeen, Wash.
Olson had to set part of his dream aside when donations declined during the recession. He pursued his educational program Call of the Sea using the schooner Seaward, which gives 5,000 children and youth unique learning opportunities every year.
But Olson is not one to give up on his big goals.
By 2013, construction of the Matthew Turner in Sausalito was underway. The keel was laid, and in due time, the laminated framework or “bones” were blessed. Last June, the final plank, called the “whisky plank,” was put in place. Special ceremonies, as is the maritime tradition, marked these significant milestones.
Saturday’s launch has been another such milestone for both the Matthew Turner and Olson, who has 50 years of maritime experience under his belt as a sailor as well as ship builder.
The hull is done and painted white and blue, in keeping with Turner’s own paint schemes. An antique wheel the captain will use for steering has been restored to gleaming condition and is in place.
But the ship has more work to be done. Despite the height of the tent where the Matthew Turner has been under construction, the shelter is nowhere near tall enough for the 100-foot masts or the 7,100 square feet of sails that will be added throughout summer and into the fall.
So a crane company set rollers into place and the organizations’ volunteers waited patiently for high tide to bring the bay waters high enough to ease the white and blue ship off land and into the water, where it would be towed alongside the Seaward.
Horns announced the beginning of the launch, which started after 5 p.m., when the lowering sun set the white ship aglow. As hundreds of people watching on shore began to cheer, watercraft that had crowded as close as patrol boats would allow began sounding their horns as well.
Those in the bay may have had the best view. Some paddled out on surfboards and wavesurfers, sharing the water with an outrigger canoe, catamarans, sloops, power boats, ketches and larger sailcraft.
One of those anchored off shore was the Freda B, a schooner made popular by its public sunset cruises on the bay, and other short and longer sails.
Saturday afternoon, its captain and crew welcomed 25 aboard for a dinner sail out towards San Francisco before settling in near the Matthew Turner launch site.
Once the brigantine was moored next to the Seaward, the Freda B drew alongside to congratulate Olson and the volunteers. In turn, Olson waved back at the schooner’s passengers, and his team raised a cheer for the Freda B.
“It really gets my heart going. There are a thousand people out there – they better do a ‘Hip, hip hooray!’” Captain Paul Dines said.
Dines has known Olson for a decade, and has plenty of admiration for what’s been accomplished, not only for the additional children who will get to take classes aboard the Matthew Turner, but also for the maritime community in general.
“Alan’s a lifelong sailor,” he said with respect.
He explained that unlike some fields of industry and activity, ship building and related careers don’t have formal courses of study at colleges. Those pursuing such jobs often can’t find degrees that match their goals.
“Here, you learn from your mentors what it means to be a good mariner,” Dines said. Olson has “the voice of maturity,” Dines said. “He’s sailed around the world for 15 years. He has an appreciation of the craft. He knows the exceptions and the rules.”
Olson also is an admirer of the Turner ship designs.
Turner was born in 1825 in Geneva, Ohio, and learned lumber production from his father, who operated a sawmill on Lake Erie’s shoreline. He also watched his father build the Geneva, a sloop used to ship lumber and construction stone. Not long afterwards, Turner had taken up designing vessels, which his father built and launched starting in 1848.
Moving to California along with other Gold Rush ’49ers who were lured by the chance to strike gold, Turner succeeded in mining in Calaveras County, then started shipping lumber and later cod to San Francisco from Mendocino.
In 1868, Turner built his brig Nautilus along radical lines, with the intent to shorten the time it took to sail from Tahiti to San Francisco. As his shipbuilding success grew, he opened a yard first near Hunter’s Point and then in Benicia in 1883, when he realized he needed even more room to expand.
Among the famous ships Turner built are the Anna, that could sail from Honolulu, Hawai`i, to San Francisco in 10 days; the Amaranth, a four-masted barquentine that set a record with its 23-day run from Astoria, Oregon, to Shanghai, China; the schooner Equator that was chartered by author Robert Louis Stevenson and inspired his book, “The Wrecker;” the first Matson Line ship, the Emma Claudina; and the Papeete, a schooner that could carry passengers from San Francisco to Tahiti in 17 days.
The Galilee, on which the Matthew Turner is patterned, was built in 1891. The ship still holds the Tahiti-0San Francisco record for a wood-hulled sailing vessel, covering the distance in 22 days. Later, the Galilee was converted to a magnetic observatory for use for three years by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, before being transformed into a schooner and a fishing ship.
The ship was beached in Sausalito at what is called “Galilee Harbor.” It deteriorated during use as a house boat, and its stern was removed in 1975.
That portion of the ship is mounted on a wall at Fort Mason that is part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. In 1987, part of the bow also was removed, and is at the Benicia Historical Museum.
Turner developed a type of rigging that bears his name. The “Turner Model” of rigging uses a fore and aft sail without gaff so the sails are easier to bring down in a sudden squall.
He became the most prolific American ship builder, constructing 228 vessels in 37 years, working until at least 1905. By then, he was hampered by poor health, but still supervised the shipyard’s work that only increased after the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. He died at 83 in Oakland in 1909.
But his influence continues. Even before Olson started planning for the ship that would carry Turner’s name, the two-masted schooner, the Benicia, was built in Tahiti in 1941 by a former Turner Boatwright.
Dines said he wasn’t surprised to see so many watercraft, also packed with passengers, circling the place where the new ship was launched.
Nor did he have any problem finding a prime spot to drop his anchor – he often has to maneuver the Freda B into McCovey Cove for San Francisco Giants games. One crewmember observed, “It gets crazy out there!”
Dines discounted those who have claimed there’s a decline in those interested in sailing, particularly among those who would rather see docks and marinas replaced with condominiums.
“I am part of the maritime industry,” Dines said. Waving his arm at the docks that bristle off the Sausalito coastline, he said, “There’s hundreds of millions of dollars in boats here.”
He wasn’t kidding. Among the sail and power craft that are tied to those docks are some floating homes, water-based houses, one of which is known as the Taj Mahal, which it resembles, from its white skin to its domes and columns.
Those vessels are in Sausalito from multiple ports throughout California and the West Coast. Some have sailed in from as far away as Connecticut. One boat was labeled as based in Arizona.
Dines said the launch of the Matthew Turner has given people the chance to see “a representative of a maritime trade that has implications for the industry.”
It also means Olson can increase the number of children and youth who can learn conventional school subjects in a new and different way. By next year, Olson will have the capacity to teach an additional 12,000.
The educational program emphasizes science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, as the collection of subjects are now called. But the students use those elements of those subjects to learn about navigation, oceanic ecology, maritime history, seamanship and teamwork on three hour sails on up to multiple-day and night excursions.
That way, Dines said, the children learn firsthand, not through computer programs.
Classes, which are arranged in conjunction with area school districts, won’t start until spring. In the meantime, Olson is planning some excursions that will reward the investors who have underwritten the cost of the ship and the volunteers who have donated hundreds of hours of time, and will continue to do so until the miles of lines and yards of sail are in place.
The ship displaces 175 tons and once the internal construction is done, will have 38 berths. Its on-deck length is 100 feet, and its sparred length is 132 feet, with a 25-foot beam and 10 foot draft.
Olson has been conscientious about the new ship’s construction, and is hoping the Matthew Turner will be designated a “living ship” for being ecologically designed.
The vessel has been built of sustainably harvested Douglas fir, and its twin 125 kilowatt electric motors will regenerate power when the Matthew Turner is under sail. The ship has two 100 kilowatt hour banks of lithium batteries and two 100-kilowatt bio-fuel generators.
Dines approves of that, too, because being connected with the environment is a big part of the maritime lifestyle.
“I hope this ship will help (people) be inspired,” he said. He also said he hopes they’ll be encouraged toward acceptance “of this way of life in the elements, where man isn’t supreme and the ego becomes subservient to Mother Nature.”
Those interested in Olson’s project and educational programs may visit the website www.educationaltallship.org.
Those wanting to sail aboard the Freda B may visit its website www.schoonerfredab.com

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