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Overview

Built in CT in 1835, the Niantic was a cargo and whaling ship that, due to the Gold Rush fervor, lost its crew in San Francisco, CA, in 07/1849. About 200 vessels were abandoned in San Francisco Bay during the height of the Gold Rush in 1849 and 1850, although, according to historian James P. Delgado, about half were returned to nautical service. (See James P. Delgado, "Apprendix 2," in Gold Rush Port: The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco's Waterfront, [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009] p. 190.) The Niantic was initially moored in shallow waters off of Clay Street and its pier. Between 1849 and 1852, several large fires burned San Francisco's swollen business district, some of which did serious damage to this ship. At a time when building materials were costly and in low supply, ready-made nautical structures, like the Niantic, were utilized as warehouses, offices and hotels. In 1849 and 1850, many ships floated in shallow moorages close to shore but gradually became landlocked as great volumes of landfill and debris (including the remains of many burnt buildings) were discarded into San Francisco Bay around them. Other ships were also beached gradually, including the Apollo, General Harrison and William Gray, and employed as land-based shelters during the 1850s and 1860s. As the Niantic's remains have been unearthed at various intervals--in 1872, 1907 and 1978--it has become the best known of these sea-faring vessels used as improvised shelters on dry land.

Building History

Thomas Childs (1765-1856), a ship master builder, constructed the three-masted Niantic in 1835. (See Ancestry.com Source Citation Connecticut State Library; Hartford, Connecticut; The Charles R. Hale Collection of Connecticut Cemetery Inscriptions, accessed 12/16/2024.) (Dates given for its construction have ranged between 1832 and 1835, although the latter date seems certain.) Childs had constructed approximately 237 vessels during his long lifetime, most completed at yards at Middle Haddam on the Connecticut River, near Middletown and Chatham, CT, (renamed “East Hampton” in 1915). (See Isabel Foote Loomis, "The Town of Chatham," The Connecticut Magazine, vol. V, no. 7, 07/1899, p. 372.) The Niantic was one of the last large ships produced at Middle Haddam during Childs's long career. (See Thomas A. Stevens, Connecticut River Museum.org, "Vessels Built on the Connecticut River Town of Middle Haddam or Chatham," np, published 04/2020, accessed 12/16/2024.)

For several years after her christening, the Niantic made lucrative circuits between New England and various Asian ports. By about 1844, new owners transformed her into a whaleship. The Niantic spent the years 1844 through 1847 on a whaling expedition to New Zealand and the South Pacific and, by 1848, the ship's new owners, Burr and Smith of Warren, RI, had sent her on a voyage back to Alaska and the NW Pacific to hunt whales. After rounding the Cape Horn and coming ashore in Peru, Burr and Smith sent a message to the ship's captain, Henry Cleaveland (1799-1878) diverting the crew to the western shore of Panama to pick up a stranded group of 248 men who were willing to pay top dollar to reach the promising new gold fields of Northern CA. Cleaveland knew the currents and winds of the Pacific and succeeded in making the journey to San Francisco in about two months, arriving on 07/05/1849. His passengers were some of the earliest gold miners to land at the port of San Francisco during the start of the Gold Rush.

Cleaveland and his owners made a great deal of money on the Panama-San Francisco leg of the journey, but the stop did prove costly. On arriving in San Francisco, the fervor of gold-seeking swept over Cleaveland's crew, with more than twenty sailors jumping ship to join mining parties. Left with no crew, Burr and Smith decided to sell the Niantic in San Francisco by 08/1849. Empty whale oil containers were attached to the ship's sides enabling more of the Niantic's hull to be lifted higher to enter shallower waters close to shore. According to the WPA book, Ships Documents of Rhode Island Bristol, the SS Niantic was "surrendered" in 10/1849 at San Francisco. (See Ship Registers and Enrollments, Ship Licenses Issued to Vessels Under Twenty Tons, Ship Licenses on Enrollments Issued out of the Port of Bristol-Warren, Rhode Island, 1773-1939, [Washington, DC: The Survey of Federal Archives, Division of Community Service Programs, Work Projects Administration and State of Rhode Island Department of State, Division of Archives, Sponsor, 1941], p. 191.) According to the San Francisco Exploratorium, it became lodged in the mud and shallow tides off of Clay Street by 01/1850, open for business as a storage hold, office building and as overnight accommodations.

According to Delgado, “General Harrison, at 409 tons, and Niantic, at 452 tons, are larger than the average [ship used for Gold Rush storage], but they are the right age (eleven and fourteen years old, respectively, when they arrived in San Francisco, and they were both New England built, although the Connecticut-built Niantic came from a state that produced only one other known storeship. Nonetheless, the profile of the representative storeship offers a yardstick; timing, availability, the right price, the relative desperation of buyer and seller—all nuances of individual circumstance—also played a role in creating San Francisco’s Gold Rush storeships. The high cost of purchasing, converting, and operating a storeship on the San Francisco waterfront in combination with the high cost of wharves and other waterfront buildings offer material evidence of intensive overcapitalization by San Francisco’s maritime mercantile community to ensure the success of its entrepôt.” (See James P. Delgado, "Apprendix 2," in Gold Rush Port: The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco's Waterfront, [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009] p. 190.)

In the early days of the Gold Rush, a flood of incoming miners outstretched the city's capacity to shelter them all. San Francisco had no lumber milling infrastructure and few building materials with which to erect timber-framed structures. With this influx, inflation swept over the city, elevating prices of shelter and food. Large numbers of prefabricated dwellings were shipped around the Horn to satisfy some shelter needs, but extraordinary demand also necessitated the use of about 200 unused ships for storage and commercial spaces as well as housing. Between mid-1849 and 05/1851, the Niantic became pressed into service as an multipurpose office, warehouse and hotel building, its hull supported by mud and shallow seawater at the end of Clay Street. A pier was built around the ship, where it became primarily a warehouse for goods unloaded from cargoships anchored in deeper sections of the bay.

A series of seven fires burned much of northeastern San Francisco between 1849 and 1852. Arsonists belonging to street gangs were thought to have started some of the worst blazes. The Niantic burned multiple times, and was rebuilt each time. During the course of each renovation, it took on a more conventional appearance and less like a beached cargoship. The worst fire occurred on 05/03-04/1851 when all portions of the Niantic above the waterline burned. The copper panels lining the ship's exterior planks popped off in the fire's heat. Over time, landfill and the debris from each fire was emptied into the marshy perimeter of San Francisco Bay. This fill gradually extended saleable real estate north and east, and filled in the water and mud that used to support the Niantic's hull.

Rebuilt after the catastrophic 05/1851 fire, the Niantic's owners remodeled it into a hotel. For about twenty years, the Niantic Hotel operated on the NW corner of Clay and Sansome Streets, in its earliest years, earning the reputation as the city's finest hotel. In 1867, H.C. Boyd operated the Niantic Hotel. (See San Francisco Directory, 1867, p. 369.)

Building Notes

The 1941 book, Ships Documents of Rhode Island Bristol, indicated that the SS Niantic was registered in Warren, RI, in 1845. The ship was constructed ten years previously at a shipyard, likely Middle Haddam, on the Connectcut River, weighing 451 88/95 tons, and measuring 119.5 feet by 29 feet by 14.5 feet, and had two decks, three masts and a billet head. It was later registered at Sag Harbor, ME, on 06/01/1848, owned by Ephraim Willard Burr (1809-1894) and Nathaniel P. Smith (born c. 1805 in RI) of Warren, RI, and Richard S. Griswold, Sr. (1809–1849), G. Winthrop Gray (1799-1863) and John Cleve Green (1800-1875), who worked as partners in the very prosperous firm of brothers Nathaniel Lynde and George Griswold, Shipping Merchants, established in New York City in 1796. The Griswold company was one of the "Big Four" shipping firms operating in New York c. 1850. (See Robert Greenhalgh Albion, "Commercial Fortunes in New York: A Study in the History of the Port of New York about 1850," New York History, vol. 16, no. 2, 04/1935, p. 162.) Its captain was Henry Cleaveland of Tisbury, MA, one in a long line of MA whaling mariners. The Niantic became his last whaling voyage. (See Ship Registers and Enrollments, Ship Licenses Issued to Vessels Under Twenty Tons, Ship Licenses on Enrollments Issued out of the Port of Bristol-Warren, Rhode Island, 1773-1939, [Washington, DC: The Survey of Federal Archives, Division of Community Service Programs, Work Projects Administration and State of Rhode Island Department of State, Division of Archives, Sponsor, 1941], p. 191.)

The Native Sons of the Golden West, a CA heritage group founded in on 07/11/1875, placed a plaque at the approximate location of the Niantic's buried hull, 505 Sansome Street, on 09/19/1919.

Alteration

The Niantic was altered from a ship into a building steadily during the period 1849 through 1852. Early on, its masts were removed, and a wooden structure placed aboard the deck. The structure had two levels, the higher of the two positioned above the stern, each covered by a hipped roof.

Demolition

The Niantic Hotel was razed in 1872.

PCAD id: 23432