San Francisco By Barbara Fetesoff
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Ms. FETESOFF is secretary of Friends of the Alma, a volunteer organization affiliated with the San Francisco Historic S hips Park.
The Water Witch , built in 1866/or Goodall & Perkins, was the first tug built in San Francisco. Here she steams ou t into the bay past a big Down Easter.
San Francisco Bay maritime history-the phrase conjures up clipper ships, Down Easters, ferr ies and scow schooners. And tugboats. What is a harbor without tugs? Before the Gold Rush there was little demand for towboats in the bay. True, the winds, currents and fog can make sai ling into the bay a tricky business, but Yerba Buena, as the then Mexican settlement was called, had been a sleepy pueblo. Once inside the harbor, ships came to anchor off the shore, and were unloaded by lighter. The Gold Rush changed everything. In addit ion to increasing traffic and the hazard of collision on the bay, the Gold Rush brought the wharves. Long Wharf, Market Street wharf, Sacramento Street wharf-it seemed that every street ended on a pier. A stalwart captain might choose to run the risk of current , wind and fog at the Gate, as the entrance to the bay is called, but the need to get ships into dock ensured the growth of tugboat service . We don't know much about tugs in the earliest years. It is probable that any small powered craft available was enlisted for jobs that required more than could be accomplished by wind or windlass . San Francisco ' s first real tug arrived on 1851. A 136-foot sidewheeler built in New York by William H. Webb, the Goliah was the second vessel built in America expressly as a tug, and the largest in the world at that time. When her New York owners ran into debt, her crew pirated her out of the harbor and around Cape Horn to the gold fields . Once in California she served as a riverboat on the Delta. She later returned to service as a tug, and was sold in 1871 to a company in Puget Sound, where she worked until 1899. As the harbor of San Francisco grew and the size of the ships which stopped there increased, so did the demand for more tugs. Again it was the wharves which, badly deteriorated after the mid-
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1850s, helped business. One history of the port records that "the wharves were ramshackle affairs and during 'northers' or strong southeast winds vessels were frequently towed away from them and anchored in the bay. Tugboats reaped a harvest in the winter months." Tugboating had become big business by the 1880s, as the world's shipping came into the bay for Cali fornia grain, and lurid light is cast on some of its abuses in the memoirs of Caspar T. Hopkins, a prominent 49er. "Two local evils had oppressed the shipping visiting San Francisco," he notes . "One was the high rates of pilotage on vessels in the foreign trade .. . . The other was the steam tug monopoly owned by Goodall, Perkins and Company and Captain Millen Griffith its manager, which had been a terror to large ships, and especially to underwriters, for its terrific charges for towage, and for salvage of insured vessels in di stress." These evils were related to each other, as Hopkins successfully proved in testimony to get a new state la w regulating pilot fees. A "contract of long stand ing" was revealed, under which monopoly tugs wo uld not take ships to sea without a pilot (which they legally cou ld do), in return for which the pilot kicked back half the outgoing pilotage fee to the tug, and recommended none but monopoly tugs to inbound ships. With the $50,000 subsidy that resulted from this practice, the Tug Company was able to buy up its rivals and charge exorbitant rates. Hopkin s, acting for the shipowners of the port, was able to secure publication of the contract, and drew up a bill which reduced pilotage rates and made such contracts a public offense. Hopkins sadly records the fate of this bill: For a while we were sure of victory. But a multitud e of honest men were never a match for a few rogues in such matters. We were beaten aft er a
furious contest (la sting nearly the entire sess ion) by th e expend iture of $40,000 in bribes among the Senato rs; beaten by just one vote. It was so me sati s faction in making o ur published report to name the men who paid and received the money, not one of whom took the troub le to deny the charge!
The affair ended with Hopkins working with the ship owners to start their own com pany-the Ship Owners and Merchants Steam Tug Company. They built four tugs the first year, and since the company's stockholders owned nearly all ships emp loying tugs, the monopoly began to weaken. Finally, in 1888, the new company bought all their rival 's boats, and Millen Griffith was driven out of business. Tugboat companies on the bay around the turn of the century included Rolph Navigation and Coal, J .D . Spreck les & Bros., and the Ship Owners and Merchant Steam Tug Company, the latter two popularly called by the color of their stacks: Spreckles was Black Stack, Ship Owners was Red Stack . Yet even at their peak, an up-and-coming launch company owner was laying the foundation for a maritime empire which would eventually dominate the entire coast. That man was Tom Crowley. Thomas C. Crowley's stepfather had been in the launch business on the bay when Whitehall boats were sti ll used to carry crew ashore and to provision ships at anchor. After the 1906 earthquake he went into towing, and won the contract to tow barges of rock for fill for the Key Route Railway pier, now the site of the Bay Bridge. For a time, Crowley, Black Stack and Red Stack competed against each other. Competition cou ld get very stiff among the tugs. The rule was that the first tug there got the tow, but a second tug on the scene was always to the bargaining advantage of the ship's captain. The San Francisco Examiner records; an instance of a Crowley cap-
SJEA HISTORY, SPRING 1978