Evening star., 1900-11-08
A SHIP IN A CITY STREET.
San Francisco Has a Warehouse Built
on Il Stranded Hulk.


n Stranded Hulk.
From the New York Tribune.
The Front street building which rests
upon the wreck of beached ship may be
the only one of the sort in New York, but
at least in one other city there is similar
structure, and locally a better known one,
for the reason that the building preserves
the name of the ship.
This is in San Francisco. where none may
aspire to rank in the pioneer or forty
miner class unless he can distinctly re-
member when the water came up to Mont
gomery street." which relatively to the
present pier and bulkhead line represents
distance much further inland than Front
street in New York. At the time when
Montgomery street had only one side, being
in reality the beach, the bay of San Fran
cisco was crowded with all sorts of ships
dying idle for the simple reason that all
hands and the cook had skipped out for
Suffers Fort and the mines. 1t was impos-
sible to get the ships discharged; men would
never consent to be stevedores on the beach
when they could be millionaires at the
mines. That is why many of the cargoe9s
were never broached except when there
was need of something to fill up the mud
holes on the beach streets. No Argonaut
would respect himself if he could not tell lNot
the time when he saw the streets along the
water front paved with plug tobacco in
boxes.
One of this fleet, abandoned and derelct
at her anchors, the good ship Mantle,
parted her cables in one of the stiff winds
for which the Golden Gate is notorious
drifted ashore on the mud fiat at the foot
of Clay street, and found a convenient and
sticky berth about a hundred yards OFF
shore on the line of the present SansoYe
street. The underwriters paid the loss for
at the current rate of wages and the alb
sence of labor it would have cost half
dozen times her worth to get her off, and
even then she would have been of no use
without sailors. Having paid the loss. the
underwriters IN turn abandoned her, and
probably felt in luck that they were not
called upon by some owner of real estate 70
take the ship away.
The presence of the ship aided the sitting
up of the mud fiat, and in short time It
was awash only at high tide, and flnaIly
dry all day long Then 1t was reccgn1ed
that this was a new addition to the front
of the city, and some business man took
possession of the ship and made it over into
a warehouse. The vessel was sound in
every timber, spars all standing and sails
on the yards, the hold as tight a drum,
and if she did make as much as a foot Il
month, it was only short trick at tho
pumps to clear it out. In fact, nothing
could have been better for warehous and
general chandlery. The hold made an tx
cellent cellar. the floor of the second story
was supported by the lower masts at the
tops, the roof was fixed at the crosstrees.
and the royal masts were left standing
above the roof, with the signal halyards
ready rove, to serve for fagstaffs.
Gradually the building was altered ana
disappeared from view, but the name
Mantle was fixture. and people entering
the warehouse continued to speak of COM
ing aboard or coming over the side. When
the city decided to expand at the expense
of the bay, and filled in the flats and formed
Sansome and Battery, and all the other
streets which have put the wreck of the
Mantle half mile inland, the filling in
buried out of sight the hull and channel
plates of the ship. and ii ceased to resemble
anything that had ever hoated. When thiS
first building. went into decay and was con-
demned the old ship was found to be the
soundest part Of it all. But it was buried
still deeper by the foundations of the large
and for that time modern building that toolr
its place. Now there is nothing of the ship
left except the name of the building and the
old mainmast. which runs up from story to
story, and is used to support its due share
of the weight Some of the pioneers stoutly
aver that the mainmast Of the Mantle
prophesies the coming of gales upon the
bay by the way 1t creaks for two or three
days before the wind comes, and that these
forecasts are much more to be relied on
than the suesses of the weather bureau.