FISHING VESSELS AND BOATS OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 
35 
Some of the vessels are apparently constructed in a manner that makes them 
unsafe and unsuited to the business in which they are employed. 
According to Lieut. Commander Tanner, the Arago “is greatly inferior in type to 
the poorer class of offshore fishing vessels on the Eastern coast, and would not com- 
mand a crew from Gloucester or Portland. She is 30 years old, and was built a 
Goose Bay, California. The floor timbers used in her construction were taken from an 
English bark which was wrecked at that place.”* 
The typical dory is extensively and almost universally employed in the cod fishery 
both in Alaskan waters and the Okhotsk Sea. The dories used there are generally 
built on the Pacific coast, though in some instances they have been imported from the 
East. As a rule, what are termed “single dories,” with a length of about 13 feet on 
the bottom, are most in favor, one man going in each boat. 
On pages 45 and 46 more detailed mention is made of the dories built on the Pacific 
coast. 
17. The halibut vessels. — The vessels employed in the Pacific fresh and salt halibut 
industry (recently conducted to some extent from ports on Puget Sound) are nearly 
all Eastern-built clipper schooners, that sailed from New England ports to prosecute 
this fishery, which is a new enterprise in this region. One steam schooner, called the 
George H. Chance , of Yaquina, Oregon, has entered into this fishery, marketing her 
catch at Portland, which is her fishing port. The vessels sailing from Puget Sound 
vary from about 60 tons to more than 100 tons, the largest being the Mollie Adams , of 
Gloucester, Massachusetts, and one of the finest of the New England fleet which rounded 
Cape Horn in the winter of 1887-88.f 
V.— SALMON VESSELS AND BOATS. 
18. The salmon fleet of Alaska. — The salmon fishery in Alaska necessitates the 
employment of vessels for transporting the supplies and equipments to the stations on 
the coast, in freighting products to San Francisco or other markets, and in supplying 
the canneries with fish from points within easy reach. The fleet is composed of vessels 
of almost every kind, from small sailing schooners to large sea-going steamers. In 
1889 the sailing vessels consisted of schooners ranging from 50 or 80 tons to a five-masted 
vessel of more than 800 tons; besides these there were brigs, barks, and ships of varying 
dimensions. The steam vessels are mostly small schooners ranging from less than 16 
to upwards of 90 tons, used chiefly for transporting salmon to the canneries, from 
distances varying from 10 or 12 to perhaps 19 miles. Several steamers, however, of 
considerable size are used as transports or freighters, one of these being the Haytien 
Republic , a first-class ocean-going propeller of 779.53 tons. See plate xi. 
* Vol. viii, Bulletin U. S. Fish Commission, page 22. 
tThe Mollie Adams engaged in pelagic fur sealing a portion of the seasons of 1888 and 1889. 
