The MATTHEW TURNER

When the 135' brigantine MATTHEW TURNER first slipped into the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay in spring 2017, it was to the sound of horns honking, bells ringing, and cheers from a crowd of several thousand. There was much to celebrate and much for history to note: She was the first large wooden ship built in the Bay Area in almost 100 years. She was built with the help of volunteers numbering in the hundreds. She was financed entirely by private donations, which kept pace even when costs and the timeline extended well beyond initial estimates. She was built almost entirely of donated and sustainably grown wood. And she will likely leave a smaller carbon footprint in her wake than almost any other ship, tall or “short,” because the MATTHEW TURNER is believed to be the only tall ship in the world whose auxiliary power comes from electric motors.

The jubilation that day extended beyond a ship’s launching. Much of it was also directed at the TURNER’s creator, Capt. Alan Olson. For more than 40 years, he had been dreaming of this ship, her educational potential, and her ability to attract a vast audience to sailing. For 20 of those years, he had been actively planning for this exact day. Even though it would be several more years before the ship was rigged, inspected, and ready to sail, it’s fair to say that the prelude to Olson’s opus was in the air that day. 

The long road from there to here began in rural Minnesota, where Alan grew up in the 1940s. Though raised on a horse ranch, he remembers focusing on farther horizons after watching a Douglas Fairbanks pirate movie at the local theater—three times—at the age of six. “It altered my life,” he says. “I knew someday I was going to sail on tall ships.”