Matthew Turner was one of many who left their homes in faraway states to try to strike it rich on California gold. Unlike a lot of people, he succeeded.

But Turner’s fame didn’t come from his mining skills nor his later successful timber business. Instead, he became best known for his skill at building fast ships, particularly those that could cover the ocean from Tahiti to California, a popular trade route.

Turner’s name lives on in Benicia at the elementary school of the same name.

But Turner didn’t start his shipbuilding here. His first ship design was completed by his father at Lake Erie, Ohio, before Turner traveled to California to join the gold rush and, later, to start the lumber business.
The lumber business required sailing vessels, so Turner used the skills he learned alongside his father to design and build tall ships.

His first ocean-voyaging ship was built in Eureka. He then started a yard at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco.
When that succeeded, Turner expanded his business by opening his Benicia shipyard in 1883 at the foot of what is now West Twelfth Street, now the 30-acre Matthew Turner Shipyard Park.

Turner built at least 154 wood-hulled ships there, and developed the “Turner Model” rigging that made it easier to handle his ships in Pacific storms. Besides swift commercial vessels, he also built racing ships that were fierce competitors.

Turner’s “Benicia,” a barquentine, could travel from Newcastle in New South Wales to Maui in 35 days. His “Equator,” now in Everett, Wash., carried author Robert Louis Stevenson to Samoa and inspired his book, “The Wrecker.”

That’s not the only author associated with Turner’s ships. Jack London described Turner’s shipyard in his book, “John Barleycorn.”

His “Amaranth,” another barquentine, broke the record between Astoria, Ore., and Shanghai, China, by covering those miles in 23 days.

His brigantine “Galilee made the run from Tahiti to San Francisco in 22 days, and holds the record for that route for wood-hulled sailing vessels.

One of the few pieces left of the swift Galilee is a long piece of lumber that is on the floor of the Sausalito office of Educational Tall Ship, a nonprofit organization that is building a brigantine of its own, based on Turner’s design.

The ship’s name will be “Matthew Turner,” and once it’s finished, it will be a striking tall ship that sails on San Francisco waters and beyond.

Alan Olson, executive director of Educational Tall Ship and a sailing racer himself, has had a desire for about 20 years to build a tall ship that would be for the Bay Area what the “Lady Washington” is for Grays Harbor, Wash., and the “Pride of Baltimore” is for Maryland.

It will be the first wooden ship of its size built in the San Francisco Bay Area in a century.

“If we build one, it has to have some significance,” the longtime Sausalito resident said. So he began researching area shipbuilders and designs. It didn’t take long for him to learn about Turner and his accomplishments, his “most significant design and building,” Olson said.

“It was a pretty easy choice. He made good ships that go fast,” he said. “The design of the hulls made them fast and able.” Then there was that Turner rigging.

The “Galilee’s record speed as well as its rigging caught Olson’s eye. “It’s a two-mast, square-rigged on the fore and fore-and-aft on the main,” he said.

That means the large, square sails catch the wind perpendicularly to the mast closest to the bow, or front. The taller main mast, placed to the rear of the foremast, supports sails that parallel the lengthwise, or “fore and aft” lines of the vessel.

The design meant the “Galilee” could leave Tahiti with loads of produce and arrive in San Francisco with its fragile cargo intact, said Michele L. Forsythe-Manso, director of advancement for the organization.
In a tall industrial building next to the office complex, the framework of the Matthew Turner is nearly complete.

While Olson and a crew of volunteers are following much of Turner’s original design for the “Galilee,” there are some modern techniques Olson has decided to employ.

In Turner’s time, Douglas fir trees would have been cut into sections and attached together in joints to form the curved ribs of the ship. No matter how tightly the joints were made, there was the everpresent threat of leakage.

Olson is using Douglas fir, but instead of large planks, his logs are cut into long, thin strips that are shaped, beveled and glued together, giving each rib the appearance of being made from close-grained lumber.
The designs aren’t hand-drawn blueprints the way Turner originally made them. These and templates have been made by computer operators.

But not everything is modern. Olson and his crew are using a 1938 ship saw that is working as well as ever.
Obtaining the lumber is done differently, too. In Turner’s day, logging was done by smaller companies that put the logs into “dog hole” schooners that transferred their cargo to larger ships that remained in deeper water.
As the logging industry grew, some forests became threatened, and the Conservation Fund stepped up to restore them. The wood Olson’s organization is using is Forest Stewardship Certified (FSC) and comes directly from the Big River forest in Northern California through the Conservation Fund, which is managing 100,000 acres of Mendocino land in a balanced and sustainable way, he said.

The ship is using other environmentally-friendly substances, such as paints, glues and coatings, and such products as lead that are necessary to the ship’s construction will be sequestered when used as ballast.
The sails and lines will be Dacron, which can be recycled when they become worn.

“This is going in the right direction,” Olson said.

Unlike Turner’s ships, the “Matthew Turner” will have two propellers and large batteries, but no diesel engines. The batteries recharge, “so when we go sailing and the water is on the propellers, they’re turning the generators. It’s like a hybrid car,” he said, explaining that sailing the ship will produce energy. And when it plugs into its home port at Bay Model, it will be tapping into solar-generated power, he said.

Light-emitting diode illumination, the use of recycled vegetable oil, induction cooking, low-energy equipment and other approaches are making the ship a “carbon-neutral” vessel, despite its modern conveniences.

If that sounds something like the approach the city of Benicia has taken to earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for the Benicia Community Center, Olson agreed.

But LEED certification only applies to stationary buildings, not to sailing ships. So, he’s aiming for the “Living Ship” certification, which is a comparable designation.
“We hope we’re the first certified ship,” he said.

Getting the “Matthew Turner” built is no cheap or easy endeavor. He started his nonprofit organization and started his plans in 2003. But like many big dreams, Olson’s vision of a tall-masted flagship the Bay Area could call its own ran headlong into economic downturns.

“We set the project aside,” he said. Instead, he restructured his goal of teaching children using a smaller vessel, the schooner Seaward.

That 80-foot staysail schooner – 65 feet on the deck — is a place where children get “a classroom on the Bay for a day,” and learn not only about sailing but also about the fragile environment of both the bay and the ocean.

That program, by partner Call of the Sea, teaches children from fourth grade up to the senior year of high school, and incorporates California education standards for fourth and fifth grades.

The children rotate through stations on the schooner, where crews teach them about what is needed, in skill and cooperation, to sail successfully. Meanwhile, they also get lessons in ecology, maritime history, navigation and other subjects. More than 5,000 children made the day trip in 2012 alone.

But that experience started becoming so popular, Olson realized he needed to go back to his dream of building a larger sailing vessel, one that could triple the number of children the educational programs reach.
Among his research spots was Benicia Historical Museum, a place Olson praised as a resource.

Olson relaunched his dream in earnest in 2011. “We could see the future,” he said. “We could see the Seaward is reaching capacity soon.”
He looked elsewhere for a site, but realized the best spot was right at Sausalito. “I lived on a boat here for years,” he said. “It’s my home base.” The organization’s base is 60C Liberty Ship Way in Sausalito.

The shipyard is an ideal spot, with the Bay Model Visitor Center, administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bay Institutes Aquarium of the Bay. Having a tall ship under construction there appealed to owner Skip Berg, Olson said. “He liked the project.”

Olson began working with city officials to acquire the permits; with Tri-Coastal Marine and its president, Andy Davis, the specialists in design and construction of historic ships; and with the U.S. Coast Guard to get its approval of the project, too.

Then Olson began assembling his volunteers — about 100 to 150 have joined in the effort, and most of those involved are sailors themselves, he said.

And he began calling on investors.

They responded, including the contributors who have helped him raise two-third of the anticipated cost of the shipbuilding project. Olson must obtain another $2 million to $2.2 million to finish the job.

When complete, the “Matthew Turner” will be 100 feet long on the deck — its outer hull will be longer — with a 25-foot beam. The ship will be able to use 7,100 square feet of sail.

It will draw 10 feet of water, meaning the vessel will be able to visit most of the ports in the Bay Area – perhaps gliding into Benicia’s marina one day. It also will be certified for open ocean sailing, making ports throughout the world available, too.

The ship will have no figurehead on the bow. Turner didn’t do that, Olson said. Figureheads were being phased out from sailing vessels in that era.

Instead, Olson will go with the clean, elegant and efficient lines Turner favored. The “Matthew Turner” will be white, with spare blue accents. The sails will be white or ivory. The distinctive vessel will be easy to spot as it sails on San Francisco Bay.

Besides being the site of a variety of educational programs, the “Matthew Turner” would be able to accommodate special events and take up to 28 passengers and a 10-member crew on overnight sails.

There are certain celebrations that are observed when ships are built, and Olson’s organization is keeping with those traditions. The keel was laid a year ago. About twice a year, Olson and his crews and partners gather to celebration another key accomplishment, and have others in mind — the “Blessing of the Bones” celebration that marks the final assembly of the ribs, an invitation-only event in which black-tie clad partiers — the ship’s sponsors — will walk in the sawdust that surrounds the elegant ship’s frame.

“It’s a significant milestone,” Forsythe-Manso said.

The ship has other celebrations, such as during the Sausalito Art Festival, when visitors were allowed to view the shipbuilders’ progress. In the future, crews and partners will mark the laying of the “whiskey plank,” the last board in the ship’s construction before the ship is expected to be launched, in 2016.

“We’re combining the best of the 19th century with the best of the 21st century,” Olson said.

Olson said his organization is accepting donations of any size, from the dollar he accepts for adults to “pop a plug,” on up to major contributions.

Those thick plugs are pre-drilled, and those interested use flat screwdrivers to pry them free Thousands are needed to cover metal bolts, not only to make the ship look more authentic but also to protect the metal from saltwater damage.

Olson said he also wants to develop stronger relationships with Benicia schools, particularly the one that is named for the famous shipbuilder.

The organization already has a relationship with descendants of the Benicia shipbuilder. “We have had a lot of Matthew Turner’s relatives show up,” Forsythe-Manso said,

“He had partners in Tahiti, and some of that family came to visit, too,” Olson said.

He looked up at the ship’s frame. “It’s a real, simple beauty. The beauty is in the shape — the shape and the lines of the vessel. There’s no real reason to add a lot of ornamentation. That’s not how Matthew Turner built a ship.”

Those interested may visit the Educational Tall Ship’s website, educationaltallship.org.