An old, handcrafted sign that proclaimed “Gud, Bad, and indif’rent Spirits Sold here!” used to lure crusty sailors and scalawags alike. You wouldn’t expect any of the freshly pressed suits or post-dot com jeans and button-downs – the new workhorses of the neighborhood, now casually focused on their pints among the aging wood and worn brick interior – to come running to such a call. Perhaps if the price were still a quarter, which even the bums of Barbary could afford.

In December 1849, a three-masted whaling ship called the Arkansas blew ashore onto Alcatraz Island and was later towed onto a beach in the breezy waterfront neighborhood now known as the Barbary Coast. By 1851, a door was cut into the ship’s hull and it was converted into the Old Ship Ale House.

Like the 42 underground ships that local historians know about, the Arkansas stayed put as the city filled in around it. The ship continues as the Old Ship Saloon, its hull entombed in San Francisco soil to this day, buried proof of a rich history unknown even to many of its longtime dwellers.

“I think it’s the most unique of any city in the country to have a graveyard of Gold Rush ships buried beneath the city,” says Daniel Bacon, a San Francisco historian and a director of the city’s museum and historical society.

There’s hardly anything ship-like now about the three-story fading red brick building on the corner of Battery and Pacific streets. All that is left is an original black sign shaped like a ship, its white lettering flapping in the wind as it hangs from a mast extending over the sidewalk.

“It (the saloon) has a rich history,” says owner Bill Duffy, leaning over a half pint of chestnut brown ale. “The sign is supposed to replicate what the ship itself looked like.” The sturdy, brick walls are lined with Gold-Rush era black and white photos. But it isn’t faces that dominate the images within the neat black frames, it’s the ships.

In 1849, the Gold Rush brought thousands of vessels to what was then known as Yerba Buena Cove, an area of waterfront extending roughly from where the Bay Bridge meets San Francisco to Nob Hill.

“There were ships everywhere, just wall to wall ships,” Duffy says of the area, motioning towards a narrow horizontal photo of them crowded into the cove. Their masts reach high above the waterline, like a forest of bare trees during the winter when they’ve lost all their leaves. The caption below the smudged, 1851 photo appropriately reads “forest of ships.”

With the presence of a friendly bartender, Duffy has become a sort of historian of the cozy establishment he acquired in 1992, after working at the bar for more than 10 years. Preserving elements of the rich history he is so proud to be a part of is obviously important to him. The silver antique cash register requires a hard tug on a lever to open, and coasters bearing a concise history of the saloon are positioned underneath every frothy pint and cocktail glass.

“You need another?” he can be heard asking from across the room. And when the answer is no, he is sure to respond a moment later with, “How about now?”

Much of the city during the late 1940s and early 1950s, it turns out, existed right on top of the water.
“At that time, there were a series of piers extending out into the cove that were extensions of existing streets,” says Bacon, who honed his sense of San Francisco maritime history while creating the widely popular Barbary Coast Trail tour.

Pacific Street was one of these “streets on water,” making for an easy stroll from the port to the doorstep of the Old Ship.

A majority of the Gold Rush ships were gradually converted for various uses. After all, like the Arkansas’ crew, not many sailors waited around for repairs or to set sail again.

“The crew was off to the gold,” Duffy says. And so they were.

Masts were removed and decks cleared to build structures on upper decks, serving as everything from saloons to a jail.

But just as the ships became integral parts of the emerging city, a series of six fires ravaged San Francisco from 1849 to 1851, sinking the vast majority of docked boats and all the historical treasures they held.

“The tops were burned and the hulls sank to the bottom of the cove,” Bacon says.
But the Old Ship survived. Already completely ashore, the ship only suffered minor damage, and continued as a sailors’ tavern.

From that point, Yerba Buena Cove filled in pretty quickly, and by 1855 the sunken ships were landlocked, Bacon says. “Prior to the Gold Rush, Market Street was a series of high sand dunes, a lot of which was used to fill in the cove after it was excavated.”

The Old Ship, meanwhile, continued to transform.

“At some point they dismantled the ship up top to make the hotel,” Duffy says of the floors above the saloon.

Over the years, some underground ships have been discovered unexpectedly during construction, including a hull that was unearthed at the end of the MUNI tunnel under the Embarcadero. Many of these treasured artifacts are simply re-buried due to a lack of funds to dig them out properly.“These buried ships are really like time capsules,” Bacon says, adding that everything from guns to pottery have been found during excavations. “They’ve had to excavate pretty deeply and have been uncovering hulls of ships.”

During the prohibition era, the saloon became known as a “café.” “One would assume they were doing some kind of speakeasy,” Duffy smiles. “Another rumor was that a brothel was run upstairs that sailors would frequent before shipping out during the WWII era.”

Now, as it always has been, the Old Ship is a fixture of the Barbary Coast. The watering hole is home mainly to 20 and 30-something professionals who work in the neighborhood.

“It’s like a dream world (the neighborhood) now compared to how it was,” Duffy says. “It was very unsavory and normal citizens didn’t venture here unless looking for a little action.”

A group of men clad in perfectly faded blue jeans and casual blazers stand around, pints in hand, talking about work and the college basketball game on the TV overhead. Meanwhile, a group of women slip out for a smoke, just steps from the rusting plaque on the front of the building that calls attention to the establishment’s history.

“No one comes in here with an attitude or axe to grind,” Duffy says, adding that historical questions are common amongst patrons.

Despite the countless pieces of history that sank and were lost to the bay, the Arkansas has survived for more than 150 years, a partially underground piece of history that is sure to endure.

“I always say it’s an unsinkable location,” Duffy says with a laugh.