Recycling Old Ships

NARRATOR 
The Gold Rush brought an influx of industry to San Francisco in the late 1800s. But not all of it was tied to the actual gold fields. For some enterprising San Franciscans, economic opportunity presented itself in the form of dealing with the aftermath of so many sailors, yes, abandoning their ships altogether. Nowhere in San Francisco is this better illustrated than this precise spot. Standing in the open plaza near the old brick Hills Brothers Coffee roasting plant, you're on the former shoreline of San Francisco Bay at the tip of Rincon Point. This point used to be at the southern end of Yerba Buena Cove, a gently arcing inland whose northern end was near the Exploratorium. This point's history has long been shaped by the Bay itself and by shipping and commerce. The first tide-measuring station on the West Coast was established here in 1852. Hills Brothers Coffee located its headquarters here along the waterfront where beans arrived from El Salvador, were roasted, vacuum-packed, and shipped across the country. But perhaps the most surprising history buried on this spot and under the lot across Spear Street is the remains of a recycling yard for Gold Rush ships. This ship-breaking yard, operated by English immigrant Charles Hare, breaking up ships to recycle them might seem like a peculiar business venture. But as the gold seekers flooded into San Francisco arriving on ships week after week, those ships were promptly abandoned in Yerba Buena Cove. Eventually, these idle chips became a problem. Jennifer Wildt, an archaeologist who helped excavate Charles Hare's shipyard.

JENNIFER WILDT 
They turned into this so-called "forest of masts." This was dangerous, and it really made it impossible for people to navigate in the Bay. It was dangerous because it was a huge fire hazard. There were a few fires that went throughout the Bay and burned down these ships leaving a bunch of invisible ships under the water. And then how do you navigate through that? You just have all of these treacherous shipwrecks in the Bay. So Charles Hare founded this ship-breaking business where he would float in ships and then dismantle them and sell them for parts.

NARRATOR  
The work of Charles Hare's ship-breaking yard was encapsulated in an 1857 newspaper article from The Daily evening bulletin.

HISTORICAL QUOTE  
"In almost every portion are to be seen the relics of old ships that once braved the storms and dangers of 100 seas being broken up for their old iron and firewood. This work is carried on chiefly by Chinese immigrants who hammer and saw and chop day after day and week after week with the most exemplary patience and perseverance. Under their continued blows, the old vessels fall to pieces one after the other. For a few days, the yawning wrecks, and then the bare skeletons of keel and ribs are seen. But in a short time, the skeletons themselves fall to pieces, the iron and copper are stored, the woodpile up and carried away, and not a vestige of the once mighty masters of the deep remains."

NARRATOR   
Not every ship could be hauled here for salvage. Some had been wedged in place by wharves and pier pilings. According to archaeologist Rhonda Robichaud, this was the case with a ship called the General Harrison. 

RHONDA ROBICHAUD
The General Harrison, by the time it burnt, had been built around with so many access piers, it was completely pinned in, so there was no way to get the ship out of the mud and to Rincon Point. So Charles Hare and his group came to the General Harrison and demolished it on site. They first cleared all of the cargo out from the hold area. Burnt and unburnt just went over the sides into the shallows of the Bay so that they could get at the copper fastenings on the ship. So they took all of the copper and all of the brass. 

NARRATOR
These metal fittings could either be reused in new ships or melted down in local foundries and made into something new. Some 77 chips were salvaged in the Charles Hare shipyard between 1852 and 1857. By then the Gold Rush was over, and the supply of empty ships was finally exhausted. Hare and his family continued to live in their house at the shipyard until 1816. To this day, you can see masts from recycled chips serving as ceiling beams in some buildings around the Jackson Square and North Beach neighborhoods. Breaking up ships for recycling was, of course, no easy feat. Listen on to hear about the Chinese American immigrants who executed this grueling task.

NARRATOR  
Essentially all of the workers at Charles Hare's ship-breaking yard were Chinese immigrants. Some smaller ship salvage companies were Chinese owned and operated as well. Chinese immigrants played a large role in ship salvage, partly because they were excluded from many other types of work outside the Chinese community, but also because they were organized. When Chinese immigrants began arriving in large numbers in the 1850s, they set up associations—financial organizations based on the linguistic dialects and extended families in China. Chinese historian Sylvia Sun Minnick explains how an association could help new arrivals.

SYLVIA SUN MINNICK
When they get off the ship, it's when they're greeted by their family associations. If you were a Wong, you go to the Wong Family Association, they provide you with a bed at least for the night and food and give you directions. They don't give you money. They just give you a sense of direction who will help you next along the road. 

NARRATOR
The associations also owned businesses and organized employment for their members.

SYLVIA SUN MINNICK 
You read the bulletins that they have, they will tell specifically what organization is hiring. And if you are a member of that organization, district or language or whatever, you're almost guaranteed the ability to be hired.

NARRATOR  
Another key role of the associations was to plan for the funeral arrangements these immigrants would need one day.

SYLVIA SUN MINNICK
They pay a fee to the Family Association. That fee actually is supposed to guarantee that should they die, their bones will be returned to their village. It was a prepaid package.

NARRATOR 
The Chinese believed that the dead would want to be buried with their ancestors back in China. Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s worked in whatever businesses they could find. Some even managed to work in gold mining, in spite of attempts to exclude them. When Chinese immigrants did find gold, they faced the challenge of how to get some of the gold back to their families in China without it being stolen. Historian Silvia Sun Minnick explains one strategy.

SYLVIA SUN MINNICK 
If you're brave enough, you take it to the assayers office under your name, you put it into a stage coach—Wells Fargo, Adams Express, or whatever. And if they're honest, they will deliver it for you to kinfolk on Jackson Street. They take your gold nuggets and they go in the back and they smelt it down. And they make ladles, specialists' cooking equipment, and they make it a little bit rough and they put soot on it and they burn it and burn it and then they take it back to China. And once they get to China into their village or home and they melt it down.

NARRATOR  
The Chinese American community was instrumental to the foundation of San Francisco as we know it today. When archaeologists excavated the Charles Hare site, they found a trove of artifacts including Chinese lunch bowls and more, indicating the workers' daily presence. Continue on to hear more about the archaeologists' other discoveries.

NARRATOR
Nearly all of the old buried ships discovered underground in San Francisco have stayed buried. That's because most of the digs uncovering these ships happen during the construction of a building when real estate developers want to avoid the delays or extra costs that would be needed to extract a ship. But in 2005, just across Spear Street from here, a developer decided to partner with archaeologists to dig up and remove a buried ship. They had found the ship's keel as well as the stern portion of its hull, the rudder still attached. After carefully digging up and cutting away the stern half of the ship, it was braced and lifted away for conservation by the San Francisco Maritime Museum. Yet one question remained: which ship was it? Given its location at the edge of the Charles Hare Shipyard, the researchers figured it was a ship that Hare never quite finished dismantling. Hare himself had named a few of these ships to a journalist in the late 1850s. Archaeologist James Delgado found the next clue while examining the ship itself.

JAMES DELGADO
Looking at the back end, where it was still sheathed with copper, and seeing tears in the copper and damage to the stern. And it wasn't damage that had come from hitting a sandbar or going up onto a beach. This was damaged that looked to me to be ice—that the ship had gone up into a polar region, had been caught in ice, and that the ice had lifted up and nearly torn the back end of the ship off.

NARRATOR
Researching the history of Hare's last ships, Delgado found that one called the Candace had been badly damaged during a trip to the Arctic, suggesting that it could be the ship they'd found. The final piece of evidence came from inside the hull of the ship that fit with the known history of the Candace as a whaling ship.

JAMES DELGADO 
As the stern was finally excavated and they cleaned it out, what they found beneath the planking and between a few of the ribs were whale's teeth that had been saved by some of the crew and set aside to be carved on.

NARRATOR 
Today, the Candace sits in storage at the SF Maritime Museum awaiting further conservation work so she can be put on display.