Pescadero Memories

The Sir John Franklin, Story by Galen Wolf

The ship Sir John Franklin was being built by public subscription. The work was progressing fast, but with no concessions to its final strength.

It would need ribs of honest British oak as much as the ships of Nelson’s day. Instead of gunfire, they would be tested in the Artic ice fields and the gales north of 75 degrees.

So, although hurry was the word, no pains were spared to make her tough, as bold an adventurer as her namesake–John Franklin.

Sir John had disappeared in the gloom and mystery of the cold world beyon Baffin Island. No word had come back.

The English are a sympathetic people. They rallied to the cause of their countryman fighting to extend the empire. Pounds and half-crowns rang in a shower as donors cried for his rescue at any cost.

The strong hull, smelling of oak chipping and tar, was their answer.

Then, on a breathless afternoon in London, the awaited word came. Came to the warm and comfortable town like a chill wind, and struck the hearers speechless. They were too late!

Eskimos, drifting south, ahd been picked up by whalers. They brought evidence, articles of clothing and personal things. They told a sad tale that closed the book on Sir John’s expedition.

The ship Sir John lay docside. Her masts were already stepped, her spars in place, the rigging secured. Even her provisions were in the hold.

A windjammer with marks of long voyaging stole into the harbor. Its captain told of an emergency across the seas beyond Cape Horn in far Valparaiso. A carrier was bogged down, laying there water-logged and unfit for sea. Its hold was full of furniture for rich San Francisco, heavy expensive things for the fabulous restaurants and hotels. Some were awaited on Rincon Hill where the nabobs lived.

The cargo was begging for transhipment. Who was free to respond? Why, the new ship, the Franklin. With spray frothing under her bow and topsails taut, the ship built for the North turned into the South Atlantic.

No event of matter occurred as the sturdy ship fought through to the Pacific. There lay the water-logged carrier that had failed in its task.

The furniture was lifted into the Franklin’s hold. Grand pianos, great buffets, carved tables and chairs, sumptuous chests. Only San Francisco, replete with gold, would ask for such a cargo.

The mountains, the tall wall of the Andes, faded behind them. Then the long roll and steady breezes of the Pacific carried the Franklin up the long coast of South America and Mexico.

What did the charts say of California? Very little. No lighthouses. No fog signals. Captains traditionally followed the coast closely. They heard, in the night and through the fog, the various noises of a sparsely inhabited coast. Dogs barked, cows lowed in the evenings, and roosters crowed at dawn. Sometimes they heard men call. They heard and would port helm. They were getting too close.

The sea lions, yelling incessantly, told ships when they were off the Golden Gate.

Then, land hungry and sea weary, they took the wind squarely astern and came in blind. It surprised no one to see the tall sails break through the fog and a ship move swiftly in, men on the spars and sails dropping, as they swung to anchor.

So did the Sir John Franklin skirt the coast and listen. They heard the barking, the crowing, the calling, and veered away.

A wind was making up and the sea was rough, but still the fog persisted. Then they heard the clamor of sex sea lions just off the beam. Swing the rudder half about. Square the spare and they were in the Golden Gate! Commands rang out. Eagerly the men went up the masts. The voyage was over.

Suddenly fierce rocks rose to the right and the left and before them. Grey masses with the spray and foam all around.

No chance to bring the ship about, with the crew at the mastheads…no chance now. Only a oment, and then the crash of driven timber on solid rock.

The seals were not those of the Golden Gate. It was the almost unknown rookery at Ano Nuevo. The mistake was natural, the result catastrophe.

The great masts came tumbling down in webs of tangled cordage. The waves, heightened by the shoal, mounted high and swept the decks clean. A few men washed ashore. Most didn’t.

A few days later, with ebb tide and no wind, nearby ranchers reached the hulk. For years, grand pianos were commonplace possessions on the coastal ranches. Valuable heirlooms were tucked away in ranch houses. The more damaged found shelter in barns and sheds.

Waves soon removed all traces of the ship. But its sad fate gave name to the snarling point of rocks: Franklin Point.

Below it, the sea lions at Ano Nuevo raise their voices, a dirge in the fog and the wind and night.

Hi June,

A local legend tells of a sea monster that lives in a cave under the high cliffs between Tunitas Beach and Martin’s Beach. According to the sightings, the creature resembles the Loch Ness Monster with a long neck enabling it to stick its head up “high as the mast of a fishing boat” followed by a series of black humps. Today such stories may be interpreted as a school of porpoises or sea lions playing in the surf…..Enjoy John Vonderlin

Dear John,

A long time ago I was given a set of stories written by Coastside artist Galen Wolf. One of them was about a sea monster….June

The Sea Monster by Galen Wolf

Uncle Ben, though a gentle soul, was at cross-purposes with the community. Or it may be better said that it was the other way round. Ben was a free thinker and an Evolutionist. The town of Half Moon Bay was decidedly Fundamentalist. These townspeople were well read. They had carried their Bibles and their Shakespeares across the wide Missouri as they came West. They still read these books and especially the Bible, but never, never “Origin of the Species.

Ben, observant and alert, was a strong convert to the new thought. He, like the unbelligerent Darwin, was often in church, linking adaptation and mutation to the words of scripture. This did not do much to allay the townsfolks’ doubts of Ben, but it did earn him the name of “Professor”. He carried this nickname for the rest of his life, as well as a modicum of the dignity that was attached to it.

Ben was my favorite uncle. I think we all felt that way about him. We had other and more successful uncles, but Ben did such wonderful things! He saw bigger deer and more rabbits than anyone else. He knew the tides, the weather, the seasons, and what bait to use and when to use it. He had a natural and uncanny knowledge of the sea and of the hills. Often he took us on expeditions, and we always returned with the biggest abalone we had ever seen, capazoni like Chinese dragons and eels like anacondas. Or from the hills, we would bring back baskets of blackberries or huckleberries. Never were we to return empty-handed.

On occasion, we made riotous attack on a wild bee hive. In the smoke and whirling confusion, our homemade bee hats came askew and the bees gave us tit for tat. However we could not flee and desert Uncle Ben, elbow deep in the hive and taking out yardlong slabs of honey.

Only one beach was never shown to us…Tunitas. A daring climber could go over the side with a rope for a hundred and fifty feet to the narrow beach below, studded with marine life like a bounteous aquarium.

Years later, when I became agile enough, I did visit this secret preserve. The climb was hard, but the scene was unforgettable. Access was only to a narrow shelf. High tide came in and it belonged again to the ocean. At times a far storm, centering off Cape San Lucas, sent majestic rollers booming in. In wide sheets they would mount the cliff like a momentary vertical river, and fall in a thundering Niagara. Even seals would be caught in the falling water and pockets of furious spouting air. At such times, the ledge was the sea’s castle.

On this narrow shelf, the happenings which changed the “Professor’s” life began. Expertly gathering eels, abalone and capazoni, Ben’s eye fell upon an unusual object. Examining it, he found it was a gigantic bone, partly petrified. This find was certainly not of this day’s existing fauna. The Professor had found a rare treasure.

With the help of Phil Gonzales, a fishing friend, Ben got the thing to the top of the cliff. It called for block and tackle, and when loaded finally in the little milk delivery wagon, the springs went flat. By devious means, the treasure reached the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. It was correctly labeled and a neat sign informed the public that it was presented to the museum by “B.A. Griffith.”

Some years passed. Understandably, with this new found status, Ben’s lectures stepped up a bit, but the townspeople were even further from conversion under pressure. By this time, Ben and Phil felt they owned the narrow shelf. Their addiction to this treasure cove had become so obsessive as to really annoy their respective wives. Nothing was done any more, except fishing. No rugs were beaten, no wood chopped, no gardens weeded. In desperation the women prayed for something to happen to put an end to this nonsense. They wanted Bill and Phil run off the beach for keeps. Their thoughts often reached malediction that would have made a witch envious. It should have penetrated the indifferent skulls of Ben and Phil, but their own wishes reached further.

Months after the fossil furor, Ben had other thoughts in mind as he and Phil made the cautious, but familiar descent on one warm afternoon. There was a half fog in, about cliff high, hiding the far beach. The moor at the cliff tops was sweet with mown wild hay and the smell of tarweed. Blue butterflies fluttered about the soft pastels of beach asters and wild canaries were busy cracking lupin pods. The sharp crackle of broken seeds was a minor overtone to the surge of far ocean waves. The two men climbed down the steep cliff. They dropped their clam picks and eel hooks on the rocks and looked about. Read the rest of this entry »

(Galen Wolf watercolor of Loren Coburn’s Folly, also known as the Pebble Beach Hotel, south of Pescadero.)