Why San Francisco was built on Hundreds of Shipwrecks

Every day, hundreds of thousands of people walk the streets of San Francisco's financial district, one of the wealthiest urban corridors in the world, completely unaware that beneath their feet lies a forgotten armada of ships. That's right, San Francisco was built on top of a fleet of 19th century ships. According to archaeologist James Delgado, who has spent more than four decades excavating beneath the city, put the situation rather plainly, remarking, quote, beneath the streets and sidewalks lay the Gold Rush Pompeii, which is an entire world frozen in time. Yet every so often, a construction project stumbles across one of these vessels, reminding San Francisco of its past. So how did the city come to be built on top of ships and why are they still down there? Stay tuned to find out as we explore the story of why San Francisco was built on abandoned ships. I'm your host, Ryan Socash, and you're watching It's History. For context, in the early 1800s, the place that we now call San Francisco was little more than a muddy backwater called Yerba Buena, Spanish for good herb, a name chosen in honor of the wild mint that grows along the hillsides there. Anyhow, by the mid-1840s, its population numbered little more than 200 people. It had a cove, a handful of adobe buildings, and almost nothing else going for it. Geographically, it wasn't an obvious place to build anything significant. The terrain was steep, the winds were harsh, and worst of all, the flatland that was there was mostly just bay mud. Yet it did have one feature that would eventually define it entirely, its position at the mouth of San Francisco Bay. You see, any ship arriving by sea had to pass through that strait. And when it did, the first sheltered anchorage was Yerba Buena Cove. And although this natural harbor saw very few ships in the early days, everything would change by mid-century. On the morning of January the 24th, 1848, a carpenter named James Marshall was inspecting a millrace, the sawmill owned by John Sutter, a facility in the foothills of East Sacramento. And when he did, he noticed something glittering in the shallow water. When he picked it up, it was gold. Now the news of that discovery was supposed to stay confidential, but within weeks, the secret was out in a major way. Most accounts cite a merchant named Samuel Brannan for spreading the rumor so wildly. Since he knew that he'd sell more supplies, the public were crazed about gold mining. Apparently he ran through the streets holding a veil of gold dust above his head screaming, gold, gold, gold from the American river. People believed him. And within just a year of that stunt, an estimated 90,000 new residents had flooded into California. They were called the 49ers, and they came from every corner of the globe. We're talking East Coast America, Europe, Asia, and beyond. And because there was still no railroads or highways to California back then, the vast majority of these people came in by ship. Those ships came by the thousands. By the summer of 1850, more than 500 ships lay anchor in Yerba Buena Cove. Contemporary observers described the scene as, quote, forest of mass. And it's here that the story takes a completely unexpected turn. Upon arrival, the ships just stayed there. They were just left in the bay as the men went out and searched for gold. In most cases, the moment the anchor was dropped, the crew deserted. For example, the record of the whaling ship Niantic tells this story in precise detail. In September 1848, she set out from Rhode Island, rounded Cape Horn, and made for Panama, where she picked up 248 gold-hungry passengers before finally sailing north to San Francisco. Upon arrival on the night of January the 5th, 1849, the ship's logs record what happened next in clinical nautical language. On the first day of their arrival, five crew members deserted. On the second day, nine more left. Three more went on the fourth day, whereas two were arrested for attacking the captain with a knife. And by the end of the first week, that ship had as few as five men aboard. But then, on July the 12th, the log ends, since there was no one left to write it in. The captain, unable to form a new crew or find return cargo, received instructions from the ship's owner through an agent to sell the vessel. What happened next to the ship and the cove was unlike anything anyone expected. By the mid-1850s, hundreds of ships sat abandoned in the harbor. And this is where the young city decided to improvise, as on one hand, there was a gross abundance of these abandoned ships, and yet on the other, land was in short supply. San Francisco needed space so desperately that the merchants were throwing up wharfs as fast as they could, with long wooden planks extending out from the shore to reach ships anchored in the deep water. And this network was expanding to the point that there was almost an overwater city forming. So, in that state of affairs, a radical solution arose. San Francisco would begin selling what it called water lots, parcels of the cove still underwater, and obviously the buyer would be responsible for filling it in. Now, according to the law of the time, there was an additional shortcut that made the deal very attractive. If you sank a ship in the cove and then erected pilings around it, you could claim that land is yours. This was obviously an amazing opportunity for people who couldn't afford to buy land. So, as you might imagine, many vessels were hauled to the shallow bay with ropes and manpower, run aground, and some of them were even repurposed. The hauls were converted into things like warehouses, shops, offices, and even hotels. From there, planks were cut into their sides, made into doorways, canvas roofs were stretched upon decks, and signs went up to advertise a variety of service. This was, in every sense, a true city of shipwrecks. As for the Niantic, it was dragged to the corner of Clay and Montgomery streets, making it the furthest known inland of all the abandoned vessels. From what researchers established, an opening was cut into its oak hull as a door, and above that doorway read the inscription, quote, rest for the weary, storage for trunks. In its new position, at high tide, rowboats could ferry passengers directly to the By 1852, it was described as the finest hotel in San Francisco. Likewise, other vessels were deliberately sunk to claim the ground beneath them. Some of the more aggressive land grabbers didn't even own the ships they sank. Apparently, they just took advantage of the fact that no one was watching. Beyond that, some ships became part of the city's infrastructure in ways that no one ever intended, and so it was. The cove was being filled in. This wasn't a planned engineering project in the modern sense, since there was no single authority dictating the effort. Rather, it was a chaotic approach to creating new land. And so, over the course of the 1850s, the water line continued to move east. By 1857, some ships were still visible above the landfill, jutting awkwardly between new buildings. And in other cases, some vessels were stripped down to the water line, with their hulls now forming the cellar floors, tenement houses, and warehouses. By the early 1870s, a formal seawall had enclosed the cove along what is now roughly the Embarcadero, and Yerba Buena Cove had ceased to exist as open water. One historian named Bancroft wrote that even then, 40 years after the gold rush, remains of ships were still being found under the built foundations of houses. So, that's all to say that the flat low ground of what we now call the financial district was built on top of shipwrecks. So, at this point, you might be wondering how all of those boats and ships were ultimately forgotten. Let me explain. In the early morning hours of May the 3rd, 1851, less than two years into the gold rush, a fire broke out near the waterfront and swept through the crowded, largely wooden city with devastating speed. In addition to all the homes and buildings, it burned the Niantic to the water line, as it further destroyed most of the repurposed ships still standing along the shore. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that this fire consumed entire blocks built directly atop the landfill. So, when the city was rebuilt, those charred ruins, in most cases, were just buried in place. The cove continues to fill, which is why the Niantic's charred lower hall became the foundation of the Niantic Hotel, which stood in various forms throughout the decades. And although the wreck was uncovered a few times throughout history, it was not until 1978 when excavators digging for new building near the Trans-American Pyramid once again rediscovered the hull largely intact. They also found things like tools, eating utensils, and personal belongings, not to mention the corked bottle of champagne that had laid undisturbed for 127 years. The Niantic is the most famous of the buried ships, and its stern is now on display at the Maritime National Historical Park. As for the bow, well, that still remains sealed beneath the parking lot, awaiting whatever comes next. And although its story is best known, it's far from alone. Archaeologists and historians have now documented the locations of at least 40 to 50 ships beneath the financial district alone. However, estimates of the total number buried across downtown San Francisco run considerably higher. A shipbreaker of the Gold Rush era estimated that at least 100 vessels were entombed beneath the streets. More recent assessments suggested that the true number may be closer to 200. And they're not always where you'd expect. During a construction project near Broadway and Front Street in 2006, workers unearthed bones, later identified as belonging to Galapagos tortoises. Now, at first this kind of shocked everyone. But in the context of the city's history, it makes sense. Ships rounding Cape Horn had routinely stopped at the Galapagos Islands to take on live tortoises, which required no food, yet could provide the sailors with fresh meat the rest of their voyage. By the time the ships arrived in San Francisco, they often had more tortoises than they could sell. So the animals were offloaded with everything else. Menus from the era confirmed that turtle soup was a fixture at waterfront restaurants. Another ship of note was the General Harrison, which was found beneath a sidewalk in the Financial District. Its location is now marked with nails driven into the pavement. The William Gray was found in 1980 during construction of the Levi Strauss headquarters on Battery Street, and it remains untouched, sealed beneath the courtyard fountain to this day. Finally, the old ship saloon on Pacific Avenue is said to sit atop the remains of a vessel called the Arkansas, which was taken out of the water and used as a store before eventually being built over entirely. What happened in Yerba Buena Cove between 1849 and the early 1870s was one of the most compressed and chaotic urban formations in recorded history. Think about it. A settlement of 200 people became a city of 50,000 in about two years, and it did this without much of a plan or proper precedent to follow. The men who filled that cove in, they weren't engineers or urban planners. They were simple merchants and opportunists who used what they had at hand. That reclaimed cove now forms the flattest ground in San Francisco. Or as archaeologist James Delgado once said, quote, San Francisco is its relationship to the water. It didn't merely rise beside the bay, it rose from it. We'll leave it there for today, but I thank you all for watching, and as always, Brian Socash, signing off.