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NPS Form 10-900-a (Rev. 8-86) Wisconsin Word Processing Format (Approved 3/87) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Schooner-barge PRETORIA Section 8 Page 14 Ashland County, WI remained competitive into the twentieth century. Davidson built his most sizable schooner-barges between 1896 and 1903, while the largest coal schooners were launched between 1897 and 1909 (Parker 1948:120). On paper the wooden coal schooners appear much larger, except in length, than the Davidson vessels. The greatest of them, the Wyoming, launched by Percy and Small at Bath, Maine, in 1909, was 329.5 feet in length, 50.1 feet in beam, and 3 0.4 feet in depth (Morris 1973:47) . By contrast, Davidson's Pretoria was 338.4 feet in length, 44 feet in beam and 23 feet in depth of hold. In terms of gross tonnage the 3,730-ton Wyoming was fully a third larger than the Pretoria. In net tonnage, however, the' disparity was not nearly as great with the Wyoming's net tonnage being only about 10% greater than the Pretoria's . As for cargo capacity, the fully loaded Wyoming held about 6,000 tons of coal, while the Pretoria could carry in excess of 5,000 tons (Parker 1948:47; Runge Collection n.d.). Unlike James Davidson, the builders of the big colliers addressed the old problem of longitudinal strength with more force than finesse. The large schooners had huge keelsons of hard pine, built up six or seven feet, supported by equally large sister keelsons and ceil-ing planking often more than a foot thick. Such heavy scantlings came at the cost of cargo space and were not, apparently, very effective, as the schooners were said to have exhibited a "snake-like quality" in rough weather. According to schooner historian Lewis Parker, "all of the large schooners leaked badly and were forced to depend heavily upon their steam pumps"-- a problem that worsened with age (Parker 1948:41-44). The giant Maine-built colliers were essentially designed to operate in good to moderately heavy sea conditions and fared poorly in open ocean voyages (Parker 1948:45). All eleven of the wooden six-masted schooners came to "violent ends," in marine accidents (Morris 1973 : 49) . Even allowing for the ease of cargo access given by attenuated rigging, Davidson's schooner-barges were superior to the Maine- built colliers in the area of cargo handling. Where the Davidson vessels had large, standardized hatch dimensions and relatively flat open holds, Lewis Parker writes that "the main deck in the