Ferryboat Sausalito History Kathie's 2002 Articles

Kathie's September  2002 Article

This month I have more information from the book, Sausalito, Moments in Time, by Jack Tracy.   

By 1919, it was clear there were too many cars and many proposals were looked into. In July 1919, the Sausalito Board of Trustees unanimously endorsed a bridge proposal as a solution to Sausalito's auto congestion.  

The bridge, of course, wouldn't be built for years.  Long lines of waiting autos often stretched the length of Water Street as the ferryboats continued to give priority to train passengers. Tempers flared, engines overheated, and horns honked as the boats held fast to their timetables.

When the Northwestern Pacific Railroad felt threatened by the automobile, it not only built new ferryboats, but resorted to advertising its services in Sausalito for the first time. The advertisement read, 
“NORTHWESTERN PACIFIC AUTO FERRY, 15 MINUTE SERVICE VIRTUALLY ALL DAY
When you motor to and from San Francisco, travel on the swift and comfortable boats of the Northwestern Pacific, via Sausalito. All-day -- all-night schedule. Courteous attendants. Alert service.”  

When the first automobiles appeared on the unpaved roads of  Sausalito, no one would have dreamed these mechanical marvels would one day threaten the very existence of the powerful and graceful ferryboats.    

Kathie's August  2002 Article

Recently Dolores Swart and Bud Chappell gave me a wonderful book entitled Sausalito, Moments in Time, by Jack Tracy. It is a pictorial history of the city of Sausalito from 1850 to 1950. They found it in an antique book store in Jackson, California.  The information in this book is priceless. It talks about the first sidewheel ferry called the Saucelito which burned at the San Quentin ferry landing on February 24, 1884. Later they renamed the city, correcting the spelling from Saucelito to Sausalito.

By 1902, the book tells how everyone was falling in love with the automobile. The ferry captains grudgingly allowed a few autos to be transported across the bay as freight, but only if gasoline was drained from them first. The half dozen or more autos were pulled on and off the ferries by mule team and were carried only if space was available.  By 1910, it was clear the automobile was here to stay. On one summer weekend in 1915, over 700 automobiles were ferried between San Francisco and Sausalito.  

Kathie's July 2002 Article

Sometimes when we live in such a wonderful area we overlook places in our own backyard. This summer would be a great time to explore the ships at Hyde Street Pier. Go with you family, your grandchildren, or by yourselves;  it is interesting and fun for all ages.

You can board the historic Balclutha, the square rigged Cape Horn sailing vessel that was launched in Scotland in 1886 or the C.A. Thayer, a schooner that was built in 1895. The Eppleton Hall, a paddle tug towed ships into the San Francisco Bay during the Gold Rush times. She was built in England  in 1914. Our sister ship, Eureka, was built in 1890 is also at Hyde Street Pier in all her glory. The Eureka carried as many as 2,300 passengers and 120 autos at one time across the Bay. You can see how a walking beam actually works. 

The park has done a wonderful job preserving these vessels for all our enjoyment.

Kathie's June 2002 Article

On July 19, 20, and 21, Sportsmen Yacht Club will host the 49th 4S Cruise In.  For those of you who are new to this event, I would like to give you some history.   

The 4S started in 1953 when four clubs, Sportsmen, Sacramento, Stockton, and San Joaquin, would get together for an over-the-bottom race each year. The host club would serve sandwiches at the end of the race. The event has really changed since it started 49 years ago. Now it is a three day event with games, breakfasts, lunch, dinners, entertainment, and lots of fun.

In 1986, Sportsmen Yacht Club donated a perpetual trophy for the 4S games. We won it that year, then again in 1992. In 1997 we brought it home and were able to keep it in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. Now in 2002 we hope to keep it for the sixth year in a row. Good luck to our competitors.  

Come out and join the fun; it is a wonderful weekend!  

Kathie's May 2002 Article

Joe Thompson, who has a link on our website, visited our Ferry recently.   He has done some great research on the San Francisco Ferryboats that I think you would enjoy  reading.

He brought to my attention an incident that happened early in 1896 and was chronicled in the book, Narrow Gauge To The Redwoods, by Roy Graves. This accident happened early in the morning on Tuesday January 28, 1896. Theater goers boarded the ferry to return to their homes at 12:10 a.m.   When passengers were ashore the engineer, William Tierney, backed Locomotive No.16 to the pier with three empty flatcars before the tender to begin pulling the loaded freight cars from the steamer Sausalito.

When full, the two tracks each held eight cars. The empty flatcars were always attached to the tender to reach and couple cars on either side without the locomotive entering  the apron.  On this night, only seven loaded cars came across on one side of the ferry. The crew tried to save time by backing the heavy engine on the bridge instead of going to the fourth empty car.

The locomotive’s weight was too much; the apron collapsed. The locomotive and tender buckled as they plunged amid cracking tenders and snapping irons.  Clouds of steam rose between the ferry and the pier. Looking down in the water, the rescue crews could see the nose of the locomotive protruding. A wrecking crew worked the remainder of the night and the next day before recovering the engineer’s body.

Kathie's April 2002 Article

The San Francisco Ferry Building opened it doors on July 13, 1898. The Chronicle reported, “The grand nave attracted particular attention. It is decorated with a number of palms, and the mosaic floors and marble walls looked at their best in the bright sunlight streaming down through the glass roof.”

The Ferry Building has stood at the end of Market Street, overlooking the Bay for 104 years and has seen many changes.  The building has stood through earthquakes, end of war celebrations, and two turn-of-the-centuries. Trains, streetcars, and horse drawn carriages have been replaced with cars and buses.

In the early 1900s, thousands of people boarded the ferries each day to cross the bay. This was an era when people knew how to relax. No cell phones, no laptops. When they boarded the ferries it was a time to relax, to visit, to read the paper, or to just sit and feel the salt air on your face and enjoy the fantastic view.  Maybe we were born too late!

Fire fighting equipment, relief supplies of food, clothing, and medicine were transported by the ferryboats.  The ferries also played a vital role in rebuilding the city.

The following article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday, December 1, 2001.  It was written by Staff Writer, Carl Nolte , and with his permission it is being printed in this Newsletter in its entirety:

It was a dark and foggy night, the last day of November, exactly 100 years ago yesterday.  The ferryboat Sausalito collided with the ferry San Rafael just off Alcatraz, in the worst — and most celebrated — ferryboat collision in the history of San Francisco Bay.

The San Rafael sank in 20 minutes, three people died and the career of the captain of the Sausalito was ruined, but the disaster became the opening chapter of Jack London’s classic book “The Sea-Wolf.”

It was a night to remember, and historians and literary types remembered it yesterday on a midmorning run aboard the ferry Golden Gate.  There were speeches, a proclamation each from the city of San Francisco and the Sausalito Historical Society, three mournful blasts from the Golden Gate’s whistle, a watery salute from the fireboat Phoenix, and readings from newspapers of the time about cowardice, bravery, scenes of horror and narrow escapes from watery death.

The San Rafael was an old boat, built in 1877, a side-wheel steamer with a pair of gilt eagles atop decorative masts.  The pilot house was ornate “like a ticket kiosk at some seaside resort,” wrote the author Jerry MacMullen.

The Sausalito was a newer, stronger boat, only 7 years old at the time and big enough to carry nearly 2,000 passengers.  Those were the days before radios or radar, and ferry skippers made it across the bay on foggy nights by steering compass courses, and listening for foghorns, bells on buoys, sirens on piers, the echoes of whistles — and instinct.

This was the foggiest night in years and something went seriously wrong that night.  One skipper must have misunderstood the passing signals both boats exchanged, or perhaps the fog played tricks with the echo, and the two ferries, with hundreds of people aboard, ended up on a collision course.

At any rate, as London had his character relate the tale, “the fog seemed to break away as though split by a wedge, and the bow of a steamboat emerged, trailing fog-wreaths on either side like seaweed on the snout of a Leviathan ... our pilot, white with rage shouted, ‘Now you’ve done it!’”

The Sausalito hit the San Rafael right in the dining room, and the smaller boat heeled over, mortally wounded.  There was panic, of course, but the skippers ordered the two boats lashed together long enough to get the passengers off the San Rafael.  Besides the three human fatalities, an old horse named Dick, who was used to move baggage carts aboard the San Rafael, refused to leave and went down with the ship.

It was a huge story in its day, and the newspapers made the most of it.  Jack London surely noticed; in Chapter I of “The Sea-Wolf” his protagonist, a writer named Humphrey Van Weydan, is aboard a ferry run down by another boat, jumps in the bay, and is swept out to sea.

Just outside the Golden Gate he is rescued by the schooner Ghost, commanded by Wolf Larsen, one of the most fascinating characters in literature.

Historian Neil Malloch, who organized yesterday’s commemorative event, said that not only was the tale based on a real wreck, but close reading of contemporary accounts turned up the story of one of the passengers who was swept out to sea on the ebb tide, rescued by a fisherman.

“A literary footnote,” he called it.  London’s story has been a high school staple for generations, but in recent years, said Jeanne Reesman, an English professor at the University of Texas, there has been “a tremendous renaissance in London studies among university professors.”

“’The Sea-Wolf,’” she said, “is one of his most successful and popular books.  I love to teach it.”  First published 97 years ago, it has never been out of print.  It has been translated into 80 languages.

London’s world, with its tough sea captains, its wooden ferryboats sinking off Alcatraz, seems to have vanished like the thick fog of that night a century ago.

But not quite.  The ferryboat Sausalito — the vessel that ran down the San Rafael Nov. 30, 1901 — still exists.  Now run up the shore, it is the home of the Sportsmen Yacht Club in Antioch.  The club bought it for $750 in 1934, said Kathie Hammer, the Sportsmen’s historian.  It’s 107 years old now, “but it looks pretty good,” she said.  “It’s a priceless thing.”

If you should happen to have old newspaper articles, photos, other artifacts, or personal knowledge relevant to the history of The Ferryboat Sausalito, please contact Historian Kathie (please see "Contact SYC Staff" on Home Page).
Thank you.