William A. Coulter
amed after the daughter of sugar and shipping magnate John D. Spreckles, the Pilot Schooner GRACIE S was a San Francisco Pilot Association stalwart for more than 50 years. Launched in 1893 out of the local Union Iron Works, - the only sailing vessel this famous builder of steel ships for the United States Navy and others ever built- her hull was painted white in 1897, echoing the look of Pilot Schooner AMERICA. GRACIE S would later become the second of the schooner fleet fitted with auxiliary power in 1914.
The prevailing sunset throws back great illuminating orange and red colors toward the cloudy California coast while the schooner slices to rendevous and lead a larger merchant ship to a secure berth in the Bay. The ocean is fast rising with irregular swells and the sky is darkening with the fading day. GRACIE S.'s clipper bow meets the rise, and her sloping transom stern is near submerged. Nice shadows and light catch her fore-and-aft sails.
When this was painted, Coulter was still working for the San Francisco Call, where the Spreckles Family were primary investors, and the schooner was a renown pilot ship, having survived being inadvertently towed by a whale in 1900 and a collision at sea with the clipper GLORY OF THE SEAS. The S.F. Pilot Association owns a more traditional broadside portrait of the pilot schooner painted by Coulter in 1894, with her initial black painted hull.
