Thomas F. Bayard

The Thomas F. Bayard was a 19th-century Delaware River pilot schooner built by C. & R. Poillon shipyard in 1880. She spent sixteen years as a pilot boat before being sold during the Yukon Gold Rush in 1897. She was sold again in 1906 for Seal hunting, then purchased by the Department of Marine & Fisheries where she guided freighters into New Westminster, British Columbia for 43 years. She was then acquired by the Vancouver Maritime Museum in 1978. When she sank at her mooring in 2002, the International Yacht Restoration School, Mystic Seaport and the Vancouver Maritime Museum, removed the vessel in pieces for the archeological teams to study and document the remains of her hull. The Thomas F. Bayard Collection, at the Vancouver Maritime Museum, contains the documents, history and preservation efforts. Construction and service Thomas F. Bayard was a pilot schooner built in 1880, by ship designer William Townsend, superintendent of the C. & R. Poillon shipyard in Brooklyn, New York. Townsend previously, designed the yacht Sappho, which won the America's Cup in 1871. The Bayard, Sappho and America were based on the same design and were of similar size. She was launched on March 13, 1880, and built for Captain Henry Virden, of Philadelphia at a cost of $15,000. She was named in honor of Thomas F. Bayard, an early Delaware politician and United States Senator from Wilmington, Delaware. The sail number "2" was painted in black on her mainsail to distinguish her from other pilot-boats. For the first sixteen years, the Thomas F. Bayard, No. 2, was used as Delaware pilot boat that helped transport maritime pilots between inbound or outbound ships coming into the Port of Philadelphia. She was one of the last schooners in the Delaware Bay service.