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By Root 822 0

the sandy streets seeking passage up the bay and its tributaries to the heart of the gold country. Crowded beyond its capacity, San Francisco was boxed in on all sides by massive, shifting sand dunes and a shallow cove that was by turns either a stagnant pond or an expanse of thick foul mud at low tide. The city’s entrepreneurs solved the problem of lack of space by building on top of the shallows of the cove. Thousands of pilings, shipped south from the forests of British Columbia and Puget Sound, were pounded into the shallows, enabling long wharves to march across the mud flats to the anchorage. Alongside the wharves, buildings were perched atop piles, and ships were hauled up onto the mud to serve the needs of the booming frontier town.

By the time of General Harrison’s arrival, a Chilean visitor to San Francisco described the city as “a Venice built of pine instead of marble. It is a city of ships, piers, and tides. Large ships with railings, a good distance from the shore, served as residences, stores, and restaurants… The whole central part of the city swayed noticeably because it was built on piles the size of ship’s masts driven down into the mud.”

The frequent fires that ravaged San Francisco exacerbated the city’s need for buildings. Etting Mickle, who was in charge of the local branch of Mickle y Compañia, bought (eneral Harrison to serve as the company’s “store ship,” or floating warehouse. Just a block west lay the Niantic, beached in August 1849 and converted into a store ship by friends of Mickle’s. Workers removed General Harrison’s masts and hauled her up onto the mud flats alongside the Clay Street wharf. Nestled in the mud, her hull still washed by the tide, the ship was quickly converted into a warehouse. Carpenters built a large “barn” on the deck and cut doors into the hull, while laborers cleaned out the hold to store crates, barrels and boxes of merchandise. Mickle advertised, on May 30, 1850, that “this fine and commodious vessel being now permanently stationed at the corner of Clay and Battery streets was in readiness to receive stores of any description, and offers a rare inducement to holders of goods.”

The new venture prospered. Mickle’s neighbors on Niantic reported, in a private letter in July 1850, that their store ship, thanks to the inflated real estate values of the gold rush, was worth what in today’s money would be $2.72 million and was raking in nearly $80,000 per month renting out space for storage and offices. Mickle doubtless was doing nearly as well. Commission merchants like him handled cargoes that arrived from around the world, storing them and arranging for their sale at auction. For his services, Mickle would collect a 10 per cent commission on the sale of merchandise, 5 per cent for procuring freight and flat fees for other services. He would also collect rent for storing merchandise inside General Harrison. In short, from the time a vessel arrived and Mickle’s firm cleared it with customs officials, landed the goods, stowed them in General Harrison for a month or two, sold and then delivered the goods to buyers, each crate or barrel had earned more than a few dollars.

From May 1850 to May 1851, General Harrison was a thriving business in the midst of a rapidly changing and expanding city. Continued construction on the waterfront pushed out well past Niantic and General Harrison, surrounding them with streets and two- or three-story wooden buildings perched atop pilings. In April 1851, one San Francisco newspaper, the Daily Alta California, commented: “It looks very curious in passing along some of the streets bordering on the water to see the stern of a ship with her name and the place from which she hails painted upon it, and her stern posts staring at you directly on the street. These ships, now high and dry, were hauled in about a year since as store ships, before the building was carried on in that section of the city in so rapid a manner, and now find themselves out of their natural element and a part of the streets of a great city.”

These new surroundings doomed