San Francisco's ghost ships are buried here

Under San Francisco's Financial District lie the bones of dozens of tall ships, most who discharged their gold-crazed passengers only to die of neglect at their moorings.

The city was barely a town when gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848. By the summer of 1850, there were an estimated 500 ships in Yerba Buena Cove. Many of them had been abandoned by their crews, who joined the throngs hoping to get rich.

Some rotted at the docks and sank. Others became floating warehouses. Still others were converted to stores, saloons and hotels to service the influx of gold prospectors. One had a second life as an insane asylum. Many never set sail again.

As the ships collapsed, their timbers were mixed with dirt, rubble, ballast stones and whatever residents could find to create land where there was once water. Gradually the cove was filled in, and the abandoned vessels became a permanent part of the infrastructure.

Here are a few noteworthy ones:

Get some grog at the Arkansas

The Arkansas, a three-masted ship, sailed into the bay in 1849 only to be blown aground on Alcatraz by a storm. It was towed to the beach at what is now Pacific Avenue and Battery Street, where it served as a rooming house and then a hotel built on top of the vessel after the masts and top decks were dismantled. Now it lives on as the Old Ship Saloon in the Jackson Square neighborhood.

General Harrison's fate

For 150 years, the General Harrison slept under the streets of San Francisco, only to be rediscovered during a construction project in 2001. The three-masted ship built in 1840 in Newburyport, Mass., had a rough life after it sailed around Cape Horn and arrived at Yerba Buena Cove. Its gold fever-stricken passengers and crew immediately abandoned the ship, leaving it unattended and exposed to the elements. 

The General was moored at Battery Street along what was then the Clay Street wharf. It never returned to sea, instead serving as a "fine and commodious" storage ship — a floating warehouse. But the first Great Fire, on May 3-4, 1851, burned it to the water line. After being salvaged for copper and other fittings, it was laid to rest, buried in mud and debris.

The best-preserved ship

In the 1850s, an entrepreneur named Charles Hare saw opportunity in the mad rush for the gold fields — he started a salvage yard to dismantle ships abandoned by their sailors in what is now the South of Market neighborhood. The last ship he was working on was found in 2005 by a construction crew 15 to 20 feet below street level at a site near Spear and Folsom streets.

The ship was the Boston whaler Candace, which was forced to take refuge in San Francisco after colliding with ice and springing leaks in the Arctic. Her exhausted crew, fed up with chasing cetacean blubber across the Pacific, had not been paid their back wages.

The damage the Candace sustained was too severe — the vessel was sold for scrap and ended up in Hare's salvage yard, which employed only Chinese workers. Fortunately, it was buried before it could be totally broken down.

Rooms available at the Niantic

The Niantic, a merchant barque converted to sperm whaler, was one of the first ships to bring "forty-niners" to San Francisco. Upon arrival, its 244 passengers headed immediately for the gold fields, accompanied by deserting crew members. Without a crew to sail her, the Niantic was floated at high tide into the shallows near what is now the intersection of Clay and Sansome streets. Run aground, she became one of the many storage ships in the growing city, then a store and an office building.

An entrance was cut into her oaken hull with the inscription, "Rest for the weary and storage for trunks."

The fire of 1851 destroyed all but the 120-foot-long hull, which later became the foundation for the Niantic Hotel.

The burned-out remains of the Niantic were rediscovered during the 1978 construction of Mark Twain Plaza Complex next to the Transamerica Pyramid. A portion of Niantic's hull and rudder now reside in the San Francisco Maritime Museum.

The story of Shadowless Sam

Beneath Davis Street between Washington and Jackson lies the Alida. Robert O'Brien, a columnist who worked at the San Francisco Chronicle between 1939 and 1952, wrote that the Alida was associated with the tall tale of the human freak Shadowless Sam.

As the story goes, a huckster named Matt Morgan sailed on the Alida with Shadowless Sam, whom Morgan billed as the world's thinnest man, weighing only 50 pounds. Supposedly Sam was so thin, he failed to cast shadow even on the brightest days. Morgan was eager to set up his own sideshow with Sam, and make a fortune on the California rubes.

One day, however, as the Alida rounded Cape Horn, Sam disappeared. It seemed he was carried away by a gust or simply wasted away, as a search of the ship failed to turn up his wispy frame. Morgan was distraught to lose his friend and meal ticket.

But upon the Alida's arrival in San Francisco, as the crew was unloading the hold, what should they find but Shadowless himself, hidden behind cracker barrels and surrounded by empty meat tins. He had been gorging himself for months, popping his clothes at the seams.

"It was the crew's conservative estimate that Shadowless Sam now weighed 250 pounds," O'Brien wrote.

Morgan flew into a rage over Sam's now portly profile. But poor Sam just said he was so hungry he couldn't stand it anymore.

The wannabe freak show entrepreneur threw a blanket over his friend and marched him ashore. Then he walked out of Sam's life forever.

According to the waterfront old-timers, O'Brien wrote, the last anyone heard of Shadowless, he was working for a circus in Nevada, "eating five squares a day and making a fortune for his managers."

The name on marquee? "Man Mountain Sam — the Fattest Human on Earth."



This map shows the location of San Francisco's Gold Rush ship graves.

GOLD RUSH VESSELS BEACHED, SCUTTLED AND BROKEN UP: 1. Niantic: Storeship and general office, later hotel saloon. 2. General Harrison: Storeship. 3. Apollo: Storeship, boardinghouse and saloon.4. Georgian: Storeship. 5. A brig: Storeship, name unknown.6. Euphemia: Prison and "receptacle for the insane." 7. Thomas Bennett: Storeship, grocery store. 8. Fame: Storeship.9. Francis Ann: Storeship. 10. Louisa: Storeship. Formerly yacht of king of the Hawaiian Islands. 11. Balance: Storeship. Built of teak and 92 years old when she arrived in San Francisco. Other records show her as being on Davis, near Jackson, and also as being buried under Balance Street between Jackson and Gold. 12. Callao: Storeship. Other records show her at the corner of Mission and Beale. 13. Byron: Storeship.14. Alida: Storeship. 15. Panama: Storeship. Later Seaman's Bethel. Also referred to as the Methodist Church.16. Cordova: Storeship. Water ship.17. Globe: Storeship. Other records place her on Davis between Oregon and Jackson.18. Garnet: Storeship.19. Elizabeth: Storeship and general office; later owned by Collector Customs and used for bonded warehouse for Port. 20. Rome (or Roma): Russian ship. used as a coal ship.21. Hardie: Storeship. 22. Noble: Storeship. 23. Elmira: Storeship. 24. Bethel: Storeship. Other records place her at corner of Pacific and Drumm.25. Inez: Storeship. Former whaler.26. Almandralina: Storeship. 27. Arkansas: Commonly referred to as the "Old Ship." Tavern. A hotel later built over her. Other records place her on north side of Pacific between Battery and Front, and at the corner of Battery and Pacific28. A brig: Name unknown. The Bay Hotel built over her. Other records place her near southeast corner of Battery and Green. 29. Fortuna: Hotel. 30. Philip Hone: Storeship.31. Ricardo: Storeship. Later boarding house. 32. Brilliant: Storeship and boarding house.33. Magnolia: Storeship and boarding house.34. Palmyra: Storeship.35. Henry Lee: Storeship. "...lay for a long time on the site now (1882) occupied by Selby's store."36. Autumn: Storeship. 37. Stieglitz: Storeship "on the south side of Washington Street." 38. Salem: Storeship "lay for several years on California Street." Broken up at Rincon Point. 39. Trescott: Storeship. 40. Tecumseh: Storeship. 41. Othello: "...used as a storeship on Steuart Street." 42. Galen: Storeship "moored on Market Street in the center of six water lots."