FISHING VESSELS AND BOATS OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 
41 
these there are catboats, sloops, sharpies, and dugouts, the latter being used by the 
Makah Indians about Cape Flattery and in the waters of Puget Sound. 
The steam-tug TJ. S. Grant , of San Francisco, engages in fishing for market with 
a paranzella, and often tows the fishing feluccas to port during calm weather. She is 
17.84 tons net register. The San Francisco Call of April 4, 1887, says of this vessel : 
She was built at the Portrero for the firm about two years ago, and is 65 feet long, 17 feet beam, 
and 7 feet deep. She is the only vessel of her kind in existence. She resembles a tugboat a good deal 
in build, for her deck is fitted with a pilot house and engine cabin, and she has the general shape of a 
tug, hut there the similarities end. She was built especially for the fishing business, and below the 
deck forward are a series of hunkers to contain the fish that are caught. Abaft the bunkers is the 
pilot house, and adjoining this is the engine and boiler room. ’ The engine is a compound one. * * * 
Abaft the engine room and below the deck is a small cabin for the use of the fishermen. 
24. The fishing felucca . — Among the boats employed in the market fishery of the 
Pacific Coast States the lateen-rigged felucca takes precedence, and is especially in 
favor at San Francisco, where it is the type chiefly used, while it is found in many other 
places along the coast of California. 
The felucca of the Pacific coast is distinctively European in type ; it differs from 
any other fishing boat used in the United States and resembles the small craft of Italy. 
The facts that the boats of this class are mostly built by an Italian at San Francisco 
and that they are manned almost wholly by natives of Southern Europe (Italians, 
Portuguese, and Greeks), make it easy to understand how this form of fishing craft has 
peculiarities that characterize the boats of the Mediterranean. There are slight varia- 
tions in boats of this type, as may be found in all other kinds of fishing craft, but these 
are of minor importance, and with few exceptions the feluccas resemble each other so 
closely that none but an expert could tell one boat from another except by the differ- 
ence in size. Hall * claims that “ the model is the nearest approach to a Norwegian 
pilot boat of anything built in America for practical use.” There is, nevertheless, com- 
paratively little resemblance between a Norwegian pilot boat and the market felucca 
of California. The very hollow floor, great depth, curved and strongly raking stem and 
stern post, which are noticeable characteristics of the Norwegian vessel, are not seen 
in the California felucca. 
The size of the feluccas ranges from about 20 to 36 feet in length, though the greater 
number that fish outside of the Golden Gate are upwards of 28 feet long. These boats 
have the reputation of being excellent sailers and of having a large amount of sail- 
carrying power. It is said that the fishermen who go on them take great risks in the 
matter of carrying a heavy press of sail in strong winds. A writer in the San Fran- 
cisco Bulletin, in 1875, discussing the fishermen and fishing boats of that port, says: 
“The men are very reckless, and their lateen sails are often seen beating against the 
wind when our pleasure yachts are glad to find a harbor.” It has been claimed that 
with 800 to 1,500 pounds of stone ballast in the hold these feluccas will rise lightly 
over any wave, “and are fast and seaworthy.” It is a matter of record that only one 
has been lost from the San Francisco fleet. This immunity from disaster may, how 
ever, be chiefly due to good seamanship. 
A marked peculiarity, and one which characterizes nearly all of the Mediterranean 
* Henry Hall, author of tke “Report on the Ship-Building Industry of the United States,” pub- 
lished in volume vm, Report of the Tenth Census of the United Stares. 
