Bands are eras — click one. Bars count entries whose working life begins in each decade.
Working Sail
Before yachting, there was cargo. San Francisco Bay ran on scow schooners, feluccas, shrimp junks and pilot boats, and the men who built them — Dirks, Turner, the first Stone — were shipwrights serving commerce, not sport. The Bay's first recorded races were workboat races.
- 1853 — William Stone establishes a yard at Hunters Point
- 1867 — First Master Mariners regatta: coastal schooners and scows
- 1869 — San Francisco Yacht Club founded, first west of the Mississippi
- 1883 — Matthew Turner moves his yard to Benicia
- 1885 — Freda launched; still afloat and racing
The Gilded Age & the Big Class
Yacht design becomes a profession. Watson opens the first dedicated design office in 1873; Herreshoff industrialises it at Bristol; Burgess and Fife define the racing cutter. The America's Cup and the Big Class drive engineering far beyond anything the working fleets needed.
- 1873 — G.L. Watson opens the first small-craft design office, Glasgow
- 1878 — Herreshoff Manufacturing Company founded at Bristol, RI
- 1885–87 — Edward Burgess defends the Cup three years running
- 1902 — Herreshoff devises the Universal Rule
- 1907 — The International Rule ratified in Paris; the Metre classes begin
Between the Wars
The golden age of the wooden yacht, and the age in which San Francisco Bay acquires its own design identity. The Bird, the Bear and the Farallone Clipper are all conceived here; Alden's schooners are copied on every coast; the J-Class burns brightest and briefest.
- 1921 — Alden design No. 157: the Bird boat, drawn by Sam Crocker
- 1925 — The Nunes brothers move from the Sacramento River to Sausalito
- 1927 — Lester Stone builds the 140-ft schooner Northern Light
- 1929 — Sparkman & Stephens founded; Anker draws the Dragon; Zaca launched at Sausalito
- 1936 — Myron Spaulding wins the Transpac in Dorade
- 1938 — First Farallone Clippers built at Stephens Brothers, Stockton
War, Plywood & the Bay Yards
Every Bay yard goes to war. Stone, Anderson & Cristofani, Madden & Lewis, Kneass and Wilmington Boat Works build minesweepers, subchasers, harbour tugs and rescue launches in wood. The war also teaches the trade what marine plywood and resorcinol glue can do — a lesson that reshapes small-boat design afterwards.
- 1941–45 — Bay yards convert wholesale to Navy contracts
- 1939–40 — El Toro sketched out of a Richmond YC bull session
- 1942 — First Nordic Folkboat launched at Arendal, Gothenburg
- 1943 — Erling Kristofersen draws the Knarr in occupied Norway
- 1945 — Myron Spaulding returns to private practice from Madden & Lewis
The Postwar Fleet
The last great era of wooden production sailing. Bears and Mercuries multiply, El Toros are built by the thousand, the Bay imports Folkboats and Knarrs from Scandinavia, and Lapworth's light-displacement thinking begins to pull ocean racing west.
- 1946 — Ernie Nunes opens a dedicated Mercury shop across the street
- 1949 — Kettenburg K-38 launched at Point Loma
- 1951 — Myron Spaulding buys the Gate Five Road yard, Sausalito
- 1952–55 — First International One Designs reach the Bay; YRA Fleet #4
- 1953 — Bjørn Iversen brings the Knarr to San Francisco
- 1963 — Lapworth's Cal 40 ends the argument about light displacement
The Fibreglass Turn
The material changes and the industry follows. Jensen Marine, W.D. Schock and Cheoy Lee show that moulded hulls scale; wooden production classes stop being built one by one. What survives in wood survives because somebody chooses to keep it.
- 1957 — Cheoy Lee's first production pleasure yacht, the Lion 35
- 1958 — W.D. Schock Corp founded; Jensen Marine's Cal 24 follows
- 1965 — Master Mariners Regatta revived for National Maritime Day
- 1974 — WoodenBoat magazine founded; Grand Banks stops building in wood
- 1975 — Svend Svendsen moulds the first fibreglass Folkboat on the Bay
Revival & Preservation
Wooden boats become a deliberate culture rather than a default. Festivals, schools, museums and class associations take over the work the yards used to do — and the Master Mariners fleet becomes a living index of everything that came before.
- 1971 — Herreshoff Marine Museum founded at Bristol
- 1978 — First Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival
- 1981 — Northwest School of Wooden Boat Building founded
- 1988 — San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park established
- 2002 — Spaulding's yard passes into charitable trust as a living museum
- 2007 — Arques School of Traditional Boatbuilding housed at Spaulding
- 2015 — Brigantine Matthew Turner launched at Sausalito
Wooden Boat Atlas v3.0 · built 30 July 2026 · a project of the Golden Gate Wooden Boat Foundation · licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · open data · corrections