Adventures of a Sea Hunter_ In Search of Famous Shipwrecks - James P. Delgado [54]
CHAPTER NINE
BURIED in the HEART of SAN FRANCISCO
FIRE IN THE CITY: MAY 4, 1851
Standing on the Clay Street wharf in San Francisco, Etting Mickle stared at the advancing wall of smoke. Since late the previous evening, he had listened nervously to the roar of flames. The bright glow in the sky, the flying sparks and the hoarse shouts had seemed distant, but now, well into the new day, the wind shifted. With terrifying speed, fire raced across the waterfront.
One block west of where Mickle stood, the ship Niantic began to smolder, then suddenly exploded into flame. Embers carried by the wind swept across the wharf and landed at his feet. “Get out the pump!” he shouted to the crew of his ship, General Harrison. Mickle’s fortune was invested in that ship, now ringed by fire. Inside her hold lay a wealth of merchandise: imported wines and liquor, tools, hardware, rolls of fabric and fancy foods. The men pumped frantically, but it was too late. General Harrison began to burn fiercely. Mickle and the men with him turned and ran for the safety of the open water at the end of the pier. Stopping just beyond the reach of the flames, they hacked away at the wooden wharf, ripping up planks and chopping at the pilings. This last-ditch effort succeeded in cutting off the advancing fire and saved many other ships that sat in thick clusters in the deeper waters of the city’s anchorage. Standing on the truncated end of the Clay Street wharf, choking in the thick smoke, Mickle stared as General Harrison went up in a sheet of flame. A year of hard work and investment was gone.
UNDER CITY STREETS
Deep inside the excavation, the backhoe carefully pulls back layers of sand. When the scrape of the huge bucket exposes a dark-stained layer, I raise my hand to stop the huge machine and pick up the high-pressure hose. As water washes over the area, sand streams away to reveal ashes, burned wood, melted glass and twisted metal. Tips of charred pilings become visible alongside the fire-scarred planks of General Harrison. Over the past week, archeologists and construction workers have labored to uncover the ship from her tomb of mud and sand. Now General Harrison’s, charred hull is exposed where she burned and sank in that long-ago fire on May 4, 1851.
Today, the ship lies 24 feet beneath street level. Lining the construction fence on the streets above are hundreds of spectators drawn to the incongruous spectacle of a ship lying deep in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district. Whether you approach San Francisco by air or sea, or by car across the Bay Bridge, the view is dominated by the high rises of the financial district as they march up from the Embarcadero to the slopes of Telegraph, Nob and Russian hills. The distinctive profile of the Transamerica Pyramid rises above some of the city’s few standing survivors of its youth. The relatively low two- and three-story brick buildings of Jackson Square are the last visible remnants of San Francisco’s infamous “Barbary Coast,” survivors of the 1906 earthquake, fires and urban renewal. They are survivors from another era, perched in the midst of a modern city.
Directly beneath the financial district lies an immense archeological deposit that dates back to the origins of San Francisco during the gold rush. Six major fires and innumerable smaller conflagrations have devastated the city. After the destruction wrought by the fires, entire burnt districts were filled over. The debris of those fires lies buried beneath the modern city. The astonishing collection of items that came to be buried beneath San Francisco attracted comment even during the gold rush. The San Francisco Evening Picayune, on September 30, 1850, remarked: “At some future period, when the site of San Francisco may be explored by a generation ignorant of its history, it will take its place by the side of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and furnish many valuable relics to perplex the prying Antiquarian. Buried in the streets, from six to ten