User:Wllaws

DOGHOLES

Doghole: A term often used when referring to the redwood lumber ports used by sailing & steam schooners along the Mendocino County; California, coast, from about 1860 until just before WWII.

Doghole was a term originating in the 19th Century describing these open ocean ports which were important in the West coast lumber trade. At first the term was used only by west coast seafarers and later by people writing about them, usually in the second half of the 20th Century. The term Doghole originally referred to the men who piloted, first, sailing schooners and secondly, steam schooners, along a fog bound coast lined with rocky reefs and shallow water. It referred to these pilots as “Barking Dog Navigators”, a usage borrowed from other parts of the world where similar foggy conditions prevailed. Barking dog navigators used sounds from shore to estimate where they were when enveloped in fog and at night, before radio and dependable lighthouses. It was said that some of these men had memorized sounds along the whole coast from San Francisco Bay to Oregon. They could identify the sounds from individual mills, but more importantly, they could recognize dog’s barks from farms and hamlets all along the way. Many used noises to make those dogs react and they could then triangulate using dog’s barks from different ranches. Therefore - Dogholes!

Somehow, when a historical writing renascence began after WWII relating to the redwood coast, the earliest of these writers misapplied this reference to mean cramped or small. A second writer then added “too small for a dog to turn in”- thus doubly referencing it to dogholes.

Since most of the redwood coast ports were virtually open ocean it is hard to understand how this came to be applied to them. The writers who followed, nearly none of whom had any maritime background, followed along, using the term Dogholes in nearly all of their writings.

This article should be a part of the general category "West Coast Lumber Trade" as part of the redwood coast portion.