by Margaret Badger and Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
This column first appeared in 2009 and has been updated.
Galilee, the fastest and finest west coast brigantine of the late 1800s, was built locally in Benicia in 1891 by innovative ship builder Matthew Turner. The beautiful wooden ship fulfilled her destiny as the “Queen of the Pacific” for almost forty years. The second phase of her life, retirement from the sea, began in Sausalito around 1936 and continued for more than half a century. Galilee, named by missionaries traveling aboard to the South Pacific, was and remains inspirational to seamen, shipbuilders and countless more Sausalitans fascinated with the town’s maritime history.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SAUSALITO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Galilee in Carquinez Strait with the tug Santa Fe.
Galilee was the last built of the three speedy packets of Matthew Turner’s Tahiti Packet Line, which sailed from San Francisco to Papeete between 1891-1896. Besides Galilee the line included Tropic Bird and City of Papeete. Not simply cargo carriers, they were also designed for passengers and light freight such as mail and perishable fruits. Galilee set two records on her maiden voyage, 19 days from San Francisco to Tahiti and 22 ½ days on return, a straight windward haul. As summarized in Mordecai ben-Herschel’s “The Ballad of the Galilee:”
A record coming home was broken
As if Neptune’s soul had spoken, no
Sister ship could hold a token
To the Galilee
Her bold name on the transom did they see.
Galilee’s reputation was built on beauty as well as speed. Of the 228 ships built by Turner, Galilee was deemed the loveliest, “a real thoroughbred.” An article written in 1899 in The Rudder described her as follows: “She has invariably out-sailed and out-pointed every vessel with which she has ever been in company, and has long had the reputation of being the smartest sailing vessel out of San Francisco.”
The design of the “Queen” was only one of many extraordinary innovations pioneered by Turner. Rather than following the traditional brigantine model, he built his ships long and sharp forward and full and short in the stern. He was warned that his brigantine would “pitch and dive into the water and be always wet.” But this did not turn out to be so and his sleek ships traversed the Pacific with enviable grace for decades.
By the early 1900s, steam ships were beginning to compete with the great sailing ships of the previous century, but Galilee’s reputation for speed kept her in service well into the steam era. She was recruited in 1905 by the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institute in Washington to conduct a magnetic survey of the Pacific Ocean. A “wood-built, non-magnetic sailing vessel” was called for in the proposal. “The steel rigging was replaced with hemp and by removing as much ferrous metal as possible the vessel’s deviation was reduced to nearly nothing so the scientists could observe and determine the deviation caused by the earth’s magnetism.” She completed three Pacific Ocean expeditions ranging in length from 10,000 nautical miles to 35,000.
When Matthew Turner died in 1909, Galilee was sold to the Union Fish Company and converted to a three masted ball-headed schooner. She carried cod fish from the Bering Sea to the cod fish cannery on Belvedere Island for over a decade. After serving a final two years in the tuna fishing industry, she was sold into retirement.
We’ve previously reported on the construction of a 132-foot replica of the Galilee called the Mathew Turner. It sits dockside at the Bay Model, waiting for the Covid 19 pandemic to pass so it can undertake its maiden voyage. The ship’s sponsor, Call of the Sea Foundation, is issuing weekly updates at https://callofthesea.org/sail-with-us.