Sherman “Conquers” Sausalito

By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society

1888 photograph by Napoleon Sarony, used as a model for the engraving of the first Sherman postage stamp issued in 1893.

Source: Wikipedia

William Tecumseh Sherman, born on February 8, 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio, was named in honor of the great Shawnee Indian leader and warrior.  During the Civil War, he gained notoriety by burning much of Atlanta while conducting his destructive march to the sea.  But nearly twenty years before that, he paid a brief visit to our little village.

“In the spring of 1846 I was a first-lieutenant stationed in South Carolina,” wrote Sherman in his memoirs. “The country now known as Texas had been recently acquired and war with Mexico was threatening.”

Seeking combat experience, the young West Point graduate got himself transferred to California, which he reached after a voyage around Cape Horn on the US Lexington, a sloop-of-war converted to a store-ship. In January 1847, at the conclusion of a 198-day journey, he arrived in Monterey, which was then the capital of the Mexican province of Alta California. What he found was a state of confusion following the short-lived Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma, with various American military commanders vying for leadership of the newly-conquered territory.

In the spring of 1848, Sherman and his commander, Colonel Mason, were informed of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill.  Mason put together a small party to investigate Sutter’s claim in person, and Sherman joined the group, which traveled by horseback to Yerba Buena, as San Francisco was known back in those pioneer days.

“The first difficulty was to cross the bay to Saucelito,” Sherman wrote, using the original spelling of our city’s name. His party had to transport their horses across the Bay, using “a sort of scow with a large sail, that could not come within a mile of the shore.  It took nearly the whole day to get the old scow up to the only wharf there, and then the water was so shallow that the scow, with its load of horses, would not float at the first high tide, but by infinite labor on the next tide she was got off and safely crossed over to Saucelito. We followed in a more comfortable schooner. Having safely landed our horses and mules, we packed up and rode to San Rafael Mission.”  From there the party rode on to Bodega, Petaluma and Sonoma, where they visited with General Vallejo.

When they reached the Sacramento River, Sherman recalled, “the only means of crossing over was by an Indian dugout canoe. We began by carrying across our packs and saddles, and then our people. When all things were ready, the horses were driven into the water, one being guided ahead by a man in the canoe. Of course, the horses and mules at first refused to take to the water, and it was nearly a day's work to get them across, and even then some of our animals after crossing escaped into the woods and undergrowth that lined the river, but we secured enough of them to reach Sutter's Fort. 

“Already,” Sherman noted, “the gold-mines were beginning to be felt.  Many people were then encamped, some going and some coming, all full of gold-stories, and each surpassing the other.”

Sherman’s party spent a week verifying the gold discoveries “which at the time were confined to the several forks of the American and Yuba Rivers.”  Then they headed back to Monterey.

In 1853, Sherman resigned his commission and became manager of the San Francisco branch of the St. Louis-based bank, Lucas, Turner & Co. According to Wikipedia, on his way back here, he survived two shipwrecks and floated through the Golden Gate on the overturned hull of a foundering lumber schooner.  Sherman later recalled: "I can handle a hundred thousand men in battle, and take the City of the Sun, but am afraid to manage a lot in the swamp of San Francisco.” In 1856, during the vigilante period, he served briefly as a major general of the California militia.

Sherman's San Francisco branch closed in May 1857, and he relocated to New York on behalf of the same bank. When the bank failed during the financial Panic of 1857, he closed the New York branch. In early 1858, he returned to California to wrap-up the bank's affairs here.

When the Civil War broke out, Sherman secured a commission in the regular army where he rose through the ranks as the war dragged on.  When General Grant assumed the U.S. presidency in 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army. In that capacity, directed the Indian Wars over the next 15 years. He eventually died of pneumonia in New York City in 1891.

Thanks to Historical Society member David Sheehan, who discovered the Saucelito reference in Sherman’s memoir and brought it to my attention.

Hollywood's Views of Sausalito To Be Screened at Fund Raiser

By Brad Hathaway, Sausalito Historical Society

Scenes shot in and around Sausalito for eight feature films will be screened at the Historical Society fund raiser at the Sausalito Yacht Club on the 16th of this month. Sausalito City Librarian Abbot Chambers has assembled the clips into a half hour of city highlights.

We've discussed two of the films before in columns for the MarinScope. We looked at Orson Welles' "The Lady from Shanghai," with its specially constructed wharf in front of the old "Walhalla," in the March 19, 2013 issue. "Dear Brigitte," in which Jimmy Stewart lived on a Sausalito houseboat, was the topic in the September 4, 2014 column. 

Here's a sneak peek at some of the others. If you are tempted to rent a DVD or stream some of these, be warned that the use of Sausalito as a picturesque locale for one or more scenes doesn't guarantee a good picture.

Undoubtedly the worst movie in the bunch is something called "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine." It was intended as a parody of the James Bond series, especially "Goldfinger" which came out a little over a year before its 1965 release. Its star, Vincent Price, said that the sequel, "Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs" was an even worse film. I find that hard to believe, but I'm not willing to sit through the second one just to find out.

Skipping the first hour and twenty-two minutes of this one hour and twenty-eight-minute movie leaves you the chance to see the two and a half minutes filmed in Sausalito from the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge to a beach supposedly below the "Missile Range Firing Area." It is a chase scene with Vincent Price driving a cable car across the bridge and down Bridgeway. (You can't make these things up!) The sequence is so inane that it isn't worth watching even for the glimpses of Sausalito.

“Superdad” poster featuring Kurt Russell, Kathleen Cody and Bob Crane.
Source: IMDb

Competing for the title of worst movie in the bunch, however, is the 1973 Disney movie "Superdad" in which Bob Crane, taking a break from television's "Hogan's Heroes," tries to involve himself in his daughter's life and save her from an engagement to a rough hippie from - you guessed it -- Sausalito.

As with Vincent Price's film, the Sausalito scenes come close to the end. You can safely skip the first hour and seventeen minutes and then enjoy about five minutes of better photographed scenes in the houseboat community featuring the ferry Vallejo, the Owl and other iconic floating structures.

Beware, there are two movies out there with nearly identical titles:  "Killer Elite" and "The Killer Elite." Only one has scenes in Sausalito, so if you rent or stream the wrong one, you will sit through 116 minutes of poorly motivated chase scenes, clumsy fights and a variety of not-too-clever methods of dispatching enemies while waiting for the glimpses of our town that never come. I found this out the hard way. This is the 2011 movie "Killer Elite" - without the "The" - starring Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro -- but not Sausalito.

Unfortunately, the other "Killer Elite" -- the one with the "The" -- isn't a lot better as a shoot-em-up movie. Still, it takes place mostly in the bay area and has a number of scenes in Sausalito, including a fight on the top deck of a houseboat on the recognizable dock at Yellow Ferry Harbor -- you even see Yellow Ferry itself in the background.

This is the 1975 movie starring James Caan and Robert Duvall which was directed by Sam Peckinpah, known for such gems as "The Wild Bunch." Its fidelity to the geography of our area is spotty from the start. The movie opens with Caan and Duvall making a getaway driving west on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. There are close up shots that appear to have been filmed while driving east bound. But the real killer comes when they exit from the bridge. It is the northern exit from the Golden Gate Bridge! I guess Peckinpah didn't think there would be too many Marin-savvy movie goers in his audience.

The final battle takes place in the "Rust Bucket Fleet" in Suisun Bay which had a whole lot more rust buckets in mothballs in the 1970s than it does today. True to the strange attitude toward geography, however, our heroes sail away from the National Defense Reserve Fleet but are shown heading east under the Benicia-Martinez Bridge -- wrong again!

It is particularly interesting to compare and contrast the Sausalito scenes from the 1980 movie "Serial" to those in "Impact" filmed thirty years earlier. They both take place between the ferry terminal and Bridgeway at Vina del Mar Plaza.

Both movies feature their Sausalito scenes early on, but I found the earlier film intriguing enough to want to watch the entire thing. It is a mystery staring Brian Donlevy, Ella Raines and Charles Coburn.

Librarian Chambers, by removing these Sausalito scenes from the films in which they appeared, will have saved the revelers at the Sausalito Historical Society fund raiser from the pain of watching the entirety of these movies while enjoying the parts that are in our town!

Subs in Sausalito?

By Larry Clinton and Jack Tracy Sausalito Historical Society

Jack Tracy’s definitive Sausalito History, Moments in Time, contains many stories of dreams and schemes that never came to pass in these parts: A 300-berth yacht marina in Shelter Cove. An airport and amusement park in the middle of Richardson’s Bay. Converting Water Street to a second highway from the Golden Bridge right through the heart of town. Here’s another:

The most ambitious plan tor Richardson's Bay had been formulated in 1912, when local boosters persuaded the federal government to survey the hills west of Sausalito for a ship canal into the bay from the Pacific Ocean. A four-mile cut was planned through a gap in the rolling hills at the head of Tennessee Cove, up Elk Valley to the bay south of Dolan's Corner in Mill Valley. Engineers were basking in the glory of the Panama Canal achievement and doubtless saw opportunities for construction marvels everywhere. If Panama could have a canal, so could Sausalito.

Subs like this would have had a direct route to Richardson’s Bay if the ship canal had actually been dug.

Courtesy photo

The ship-canal plan was resurrected in 1936 when Richardson's Bay was being promoted as the logical site for a submarine base for the Navy. A Pacific opening to Richardson's Bay would eliminate the need for dredging and provide for ships a fog-free entrance to San Francisco Bay that would by-pass Potato Patch shoals. If Stockton could have a deep-water port, so could Sausalito.

The idea of making Richardson's Bay into a submarine base first came up in 1933 when the Navy announced it might be looking for a West Coast site. The Sausalito City Council had long been seeking a dredged ship-channel along the Sausalito shoreline to Waldo Point to generate business for waterfront property. If the Navy took over the bay, it was reasoned, Sausalito would have her channel plus a thriving business with the Navy. If Vallejo could have a Navy base, why not Sausalito?

Sausalito's submarine base plan fell on deaf ears in Washington, and in 1937 even the request for dredging the ship channel was rejected by the War Department as being strictly a "local project" without merit for national defense. That same year, however, the War Department saw Richardson's Bay in another light. With the increasing threat of war, Washington proposed reserving the bay for seaplanes, with an anchorage for seaplane tenders, destroyers, and other light vessels. That plan, too, died aborning. And it wasn't until war was declared and Sausalito's shipyard was under construction in 1942 that the long-awaited ship channel was dredged in Richardson's Bay. Since World War II the channel has been kept cleared of silt by the Army Corps of Engineers as part of its bay maintenance program.

Moments in Time can be purchased at the Ice House, 780 Bridgeway.