RON HENGGELER

The bones of an old ship found by workers digging the foundations for a San
Francisco high-rise last fall have been identified as the remains of a
188-year-old whaling ship out of the era made famous by Herman Melville's
classic novel "Moby-Dick."

Maritime archaeologists are sure the ship is the three-masted bark Candace,
built in Boston in 1818, which had a long career in the sea trades and later
in hunting sperm whales in the South Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian
oceans.

It also was one of the first American flag merchant ships to trade in the
Pacific, years before the Oregon Territory and California became parts of
the United States.

The Candace turned up in San Francisco after an ill-fated whaling voyage to
the Arctic, where it was damaged in the pack ice. The ship had been at sea
on a whaling voyage for two years, and Capt. Norman Starr decided to head
home for New England. But the ship even then was old; leaking badly, and
with the crew working the pumps as if their lives depended on it, the
Candace made the Golden Gate on July 4, 1855.

It never sailed again. It was partly dismantled and eventually buried under
the growing new city -- forgotten for nearly 150 years.

Its discovery is considered significant enough that the nearly intact hull
of the old ship will become the centerpiece of the San Francisco History
Museum when it opens in 2008 at the Old Mint in downtown San Francisco. "We
consider it a coup,'' said Gil Castle, executive director of the San
Francisco Museum and Historical Society, which is raising money to convert
the mint at Fifth and Mission streets into a museum.

The saga of the Candace is part sea story, part detective work and partly a
look into the economics of early San Francisco and the role of Chinese
workers in the 1850s.

The bones of dozens of old ships lie under the streets of downtown San
Francisco -- most of them abandoned after the Gold Rush of 1849. The Candace
is the first one to be preserved intact.

"Before this ship, all the ships unearthed in San Francisco have been
destroyed or reburied, burying our history forever,'' said James Allan, a
maritime archaeologist who helped identify the ship.

Allan believes the discovery and preservation of the Candace is an important
historical event on a number of levels.

Allan was the consulting archaeologist called in late last summer when work
crews found the timbers of what appeared to be an old ship while excavating
the foundations for two high-rise towers near Folsom Street in the South of
Market district. Allan knew that in the 1850s, the area had been the
location of a ship-dismantling yard run by Charles Hare, a pioneer
businessman.

The yard was significant for a number of reasons, Allen said. Hare employed
only Chinese workers, "men on the margins of society at that time, workers
who were excluded from most employment,'' Allan said.

 

When Allan looked at the timbers, he realized it was a small sailing ship,
about 100 feet long. He consulted James Delgado, executive director of the
Vancouver Maritime Museum in Canada, an old friend who had begun his career
at the San Francisco National Maritime Historical Park.

They consulted old San Francisco newspaper accounts, ship logs, other
maritime museums, and the Center for Wood Anatomy Research run by the U.S.
Forest Service in Madison, Wis.

The two concluded that the ship was made of three kinds of oak and two kinds
of pine and was built on the east coast of the United States around 1820.
One newspaper account mentioned five ships in the process of being scrapped
at the Hare yard. One ship was too small, another too big, and two others
were disqualified for other reasons. That left the Candace, a whaler.

One big clue: Allan had found two sperm whale teeth in the bowels of the
ship.

Delgado and Allan love ships, the older the better. Delgado likes to speak
of them in the present tense: "The Candace is built in Boston in 1818, sails
in the South America trade, then into the Pacific. This is a ship that
carried the American flag into the Pacific,'' he said.

He quotes old articles, one from a Captain Bates, who sailed aboard the
Candace as a passenger from Callao, Peru, in November 1823. He wrote about
the "thrill that fills the soul when the order is given to weigh anchor for
home.''

He also wrote of a storm in the Atlantic, of sighting the coast of the
United States after three months at sea, of taking on a sea pilot off Rhode
Island. "What's the news of the states, pilot?'' the captain asked. "What's
the state of the world? Who's to be our next president?'' It was that long
ago.

The Candace became a whaler later, sailing from New London, Conn.

Delgado said more than 2,500 whaling voyages began from New London, as many
as from the more famous Nantucket.

Each trip took two years, at least, and the Candace hunted whales (using
small boats and harpooners) in the South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the
Pacific and finally the Arctic for 17 years. The normal complement was 25
men. The ship was 99 feet, 8 inches long and 26 feet wide.

The Candace was discovered under the foundation site in September, removed
to a warehouse on the San Francisco waterfront in October, and cleaned up.

"I loved finding this ship's story,'' said Delgado. "That's why I'm in this
business.''

E-mail Carl Nolte at cnolte@sfchronicle.com