C.A. Thayer

Thayer is the last west-coast lumber schooner in existence.  Built by Hans Bendixsen in Fairhaven, California, in 1895, she is currently one of the vessels at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.  As the Park’s Historic Ship Rigging Supervisor, I researched her rig and all of its evolutions through her career, in order to design a correct rig for her $20+million restoration.  Using pieces of her sister schooner Wawona and other lumber schooners, contract specifications from builders of the time, historic photographs, descriptions in logbooks, and drawings from the hand of Bendixsen for sister vessels, I drew 55 sheets of construction drawings, showing every part of her masts, spars, bands, blocks, bales, hearts, chainplates, crosstrees, mast trucks, catheads, and sheet buffer.  These were all fabricated by contractors while my crew and I made up the standing rigging wires--serving, splicing, and seizing just as the originals were.