brakeman was slow, the lumber could kill or injure the crew member. Mill operators generally built their lumber loading facilities on the lee (usually the south) side of a point. This allowed the land to break the force of the waves and caused the direction of the swells to roll straight into the cove. Schooners moored with their bows pointed directly into the waves so that they pitched (the ship going up and down along its long axis) but did not roll (going up and down along its crosswise axis). This made loading easier. Lumber Chutes Mooring under a cliff to a buoy or by anchor, the ship would receive cargo down an apron chute or, later a wire chute. It usually took two days to load. All these ports were full of rocks both hidden and exposed. There were undertows and cross-rip currents and continual changing sandbars. The dog-hole operators obtained franchises to build and manage the chutes. When a ship entered a port, it moored to a buoy (often a log anchored to the bottom) and would be warped or winched into position for loading. A ship’s boat, crewed by three seamen and the second mate, carried the eight inch mooring lines to the buoy. The gravity chutes were troughs allowing cargo to be sent down a cliff to a ship. Besides bagged goods, the chutes were used to load other cargo, such as live hogs. High-strength steel cable or wire became available in the 1870s. The wire chute was a big improvement over the gravity chutes. They could load an entire sling of lumber at one time while the apron chutes could only load board by board. The wires could be used to discharge, and load, cargo. Chutes were a West Coast innovation because of the high cliffs along the coast and the lack of harbors. Where prevailing weather conditions permitted, shippers built wharves allowing the ships to come alongside and load directly from the dock. The wire chutes permitted ships with deeper drafts to load since they did not need to approach so close to shore. The wires continued in use until after World War I and were discontinued by the start of World War II. References External link "Doghole ports" (NOAA Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary) Other sources Carranco, Lynwood; Labbe, John T (1975) Logging the Redwoods (Caxton Press) Carranco, Lynwood (1982) Redwood Lumber Industry