Abstract
California’s San Francisco Bay encompasses one of the largest collections of ship graveyards in North America. These graveyards include ships buried beneath subsequent urban development in downtown San Francisco, as well as ships situated along estuarine bay shores in Sausalito, Belvedere, South San Francisco, Oakland, and Benicia. As a large estuary, other shores on the bay also served as a repository for smaller numbers of laid-up craft and individual vessels. Among the more unique of these graveyards are those in and around San Francisco, which now lie buried beneath urban landfill. The majority of these vessels date to the California Gold Rush (1848–1855). They comprise a unique assemblage of vessels that were either purposely beached or surrounded by pilings or filled and recycled into buildings to fill the need for structures during the Gold Rush population boom. After the rush, a number of vessels were further recycled by ship-breakers, whereas others were sunk to establish title to submerged lands. Other craft, either buried or exposed on mudflats, date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Archaeological excavation and study of these vessels has provided insights into the role of recycled ships in the economic and physical geographical study of San Francisco, as well as documenting the characteristics of nineteenth and early twentieth century craft, including previously undocumented examples of regional vernacular craft as well as ships adaptively reused.
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Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge the support and the opportunity to work on the sites discussed in this chapter thanks to my colleagues Allen Pastron, Jim Allan, Rebecca Allen, and Scott Baxter. I am also indebted to the past research and support of Karl Kortum, Roger Olmsted, Nancy Olmsted, Harlan Soeten, Peggy Dunbar Martin, and Martin Mayer. The support and assistance of Rhonda Robichaud was extremely beneficial at the General Harrison site as we excavated and documented it, as were the observations of Stephen Canright. Ray Hillman was very generous in sharing his research at Candlestick Cove. The late Captain Harold Huycke, Ray Aker, and William Avery Baker were also great mentors and shared their research and made observations on the various sites. I also gratefully acknowledge Ted Miles and Gina Bardi of the J. Porter Shaw Library at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park and the Belvedere-Tiburon-Belvedere Landmarks Society. Last, but not least, are all the hard-working volunteers and staff who joined me in the mud of Candlestick Cove, Benicia, Coyote Point, and Yerba Buena Cove to excavate and document the forgotten denizens of San Francisco Bay’s ship graveyards.
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Delgado, J. (2013). Pacific Graveyard: Adaptive Reuse, Recycling, and Abandonment in San Francisco’s Maritime Graveyards, 1849–1959. In: Richards, N., Seeb, S. (eds) The Archaeology of Watercraft Abandonment. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7342-8_7
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