44 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
The sails and equipment cost about as much as the hull, so that when a common-sized 
felucca is ready for sea she will be worth from $480 to $700.* 
The following are the dimensions of a boat of this class : 
Length feet.. 24 
Beam do - - . 7£ 
Depth do... 21- 
Draft above top of keel with 14 tons cargo inches . . 14 
Weight with ballast and outfit pounds.. 2,500 
The market fishermen make and repair their boat’s sails and do all the painting, 
rigging, or other work necessary to keep their craft in running order. 
25. San Francisco cat-boats . — Many of the boats used in the crab fishery of San 
Francisco Bay are cat-rigged and resemble in general appearance the cat-boats of the 
Atlantic coast. They are sharp, round-bottomed, square-sterned, keel boats and carry 
a single boom-aud-gaff sail or spritsail. The size varies from 15 to 18 feet in length 
and 5 to 6 feet beam, and they cost, when rigged, from $150 to $350. The average 
cost of fishing gear for crabbing amounts to $33. 
VII.— OYSTER VESSELS AND BOATS. 
26. Oyster sloops . — At Shoalwater Bay, Washington, a type of small centerboard 
sloop is in use in the oyster fishery of that locality. This is employed chiefly in towing 
the sharpy skiffs, bateaux, or scows to the oyster grounds, where the latter are taken 
upon the oyster beds and left until the tide ebbs so that the fishermen can go about 
and pick up oysters, with which the skiffs are loaded. When the tide rises, so that 
the boats float off the beds, they are taken in tow by the sloops and carried to the 
place where the oysters are to be landed or put in floating pens or cars to be kept until 
they are needed for market. These boats vary in size. 
One of them may be described as follows : It is a carvel-built centerboard boat, 
with sharp bow, rounded bilge, moderate rise to floor, easy after section, overhanging 
counter, and round stern. The stem is nearly straight and vertical above water, and 
curved below. The boat is flush-decked, with the exception of a large oval cockpit, 
beginning a short distance forward of amidships and extending near to the rudder 
head. It is surrounded by a coaming or washboard. She steers with a tiller. The 
mast stands pretty well forward for a sloop, and she carries a boom-and-gaff mainsail 
and jib, but has no topmast or light sails. The accompanying sketch, fig. 1, plate xv, 
shows the boat running up Shoalwater Bay. 
27. Oyster bateaux . — The “bateaux” used in the oyster fishery at Bay Center, 
Shoalwater Bay, are wide, flat-bottomed, flatiron-shaped boats. Some of them have 
a centerboard and carry a single lug-sail. Ordinarily these sail to and from the 
oyster grounds, but in light winds they are often towed. 
The length varies from 24 to 30 feet, beam from 11 to 12 feet. 
* Alexander puts the cost, including equipment, much higher ; he places the average value of a 
boat that follows salmon, herring, smelt, trawl and hand line fishing at $375, without fishing gear. 
“Each boat,” he says, “is fitted with 10 salmon gill nets, 3 smelt nets, 5 trammel nets, one ‘drag seine’ 
(or paranzella), 8 hand lines, and an average of 35 baskets of trawl lines. The total value of fishing 
gear per boat is, approximately, $961, and the combined value of boat and apparatus $1,336.” 
