MY SANDBOX
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name | Casco |
| Owner | Samuel Merritt |
| Builder | Great Merritt |
| Launched | 26 April 1878 |
| In service | May 1878 |
| Out of service | August 1890 |
| Homeport | Oakland, California |
| Fate | Foundered on reef 28 January 1946 off Île-à-Vache, Haiti |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Schooner |
| Displacement | 134 t (132 long tons) |
| Length | 96 ft (29 m) o/a |
| Beam | 21 ft 8 in (6.60 m) |
| Height | 38.4 m (126 ft 0 in) |
| Draught | 4.85 m (15 ft 11 in) |
| Depth of hold | 11 ft (3.4 m) |
| Propulsion | Sails |
| Sail plan | two-masted gaff rig |
| Mainmast, height from deck | 38.4 m (126 ft 0 in) |
| Foremast, height from deck | 31.3 m (102 ft 8 in) |
| General characteristics | |
| Crew | 8 |
Casco was a two-masted gaff-rigged schooner yacht designed by and built for retired physician Samuel Merritt of Oakland, California in 1878. She was then the largest pleasure craft on the West Coast. The following year, Merritt and his friends sailed her on a four-month voyage to the south sea islands of Hawaii and Tahiti. Casco was also known for carrying the famous author Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny Vandegrift Stevenson, and family on an extended nine-month voyage in 1888-1889 through the south sea islands, first Tahiti, then Hawaii. Her pleasure sailing days ended when her owner, Merritt, died in 1890.
She was later used as a wire drag vessel by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and finally as a tugboat along the Puget Sound until her abandonment in 1956. Equator was left to decay as part of a breakwater before she was saved in the 1960s. Efforts to restore her ultimately failed, leaving her remains under an enclosed structure in a decaying state.