Mike Heiner – California Maritime Historian
Mike is a great historic storyteller. Our interview conversation jumped
and diverged into little known and curious, if not far-out, historic facts
and legends of the central California coast and beyond – all meticulously
researched over the years and locked-down by the steel trap mind of my brother,
Mike. Mike is also a performer. He’s not afraid to be in front of an
audience storytelling, singing, acting, and most often joking. He likes to
make people laugh. Mike was a rambunctious child – intelligent and spirited.
Often challenging authority, and running with a pack of like-minded bad boys
in our small coastal hometown of Bolinas. Some of the stories of those days
I don’t want repeated to my teenaged children – the eager audience
of Mike’s niece and nephew. Those stories are now mostly hilarious,
but back then it often probably wasn’t so funny for Mike, but he came
out of it with great adventures and a keen knowledge of local natural history
and historic legend. Mike has been a docent-extraordinaire for The Bay Model
in Sausalito – a hydrologic engineering tool and exhibit of the Army
Corpse of Engineers, the historic sailing vessel the Californian in the San
Francisco Bay, the dry-docked steam schooner the Wapama in Sausalito, and
the Point Bonita Lighthouse at the Marin Headlands off the Golden Gate.
CZ: As a kid, how did you first get interested in all things nautical and marine, and what were some of your early influences?
MH: I got involved by growing up in Bolinas right on the ocean – we lived right down the street from the beach. You grow up looking at dead seals, shells, whales going by - you can’t help it. Then after high school I got into scuba diving and sailing. But as far as early influences go, The Bolinas Marine Lab was a big one. The staff I remember at the lab were Gordon Chan, a teacher there, and Craig Hansen. Those guys were around a lot. They would hang out and talk to us kids when we came in. I remember bringing in fossils to show them, and they would talk about how the mesa (the residential area on the marine terrace in town) used to be the sea floor, and other local geological facts. I was really into hearing about the shipwrecks that had happened at Bolinas and on Duxbury Reef. The lab was in the old lifeboat station boathouse, and the main building had half-assed classrooms, administrative rooms, and a pretty good library. I remember the lab was crammed with aquariums, microscopes, water pipes going every which way.
Jacque Cousteau was of course a big early influence for me – I wanted to be a marine biologist – and watching the old surfing films of sun and sea around the world. It was like “hey – I want to go there!”
CZ: What about the 1971 oil spill that hit Bolinas?
MH: The oil spill was one big party as a kid! I was eleven years old. I remember the smell of kerosene in the air – you could smell it from home. For the first week of the spill school was closed so everyone could be on the beach helping to clean up the oil and help stranded animals. Of course it took much longer than a week to deal with, and a lot of the oil ended up sinking. Ranchers from the Tomales area brought shit loads of hay to soak up the oil along all the shores. Then the oil-soaked hay would be stacked up on the beach and massive bon-fires lit. My friends and I would jump through some of those fires – total stupid pre-teen boy stuff. Lucky we didn’t trip. At night there were bright lights lighting up the whole beach. I’d sneak down in the middle of the night – it was a big adventure – dark side of the moon.
My uncle Peter Banks was a big influence for my interest in local nature and history as a kid. (An archeologist whose focus was Californian Indians – Peter lived with the family for many years in Bolinas when we were kids). Peter would take us out and around a lot. We’d go explore this big Indian midden site that got churned up after the Park Service removed old greenhouse buildings from the site in the 1960’s. There were all kinds of spear points, obsidian knives, and abalone shells up the wazoo. Peter told us about how the Miwok Indians got abalone from the reef below and processed them up at this site on the bluff. From there I got really interested in local Indian place names and history. We’d build driftwood shacks with Peter on RCA beach and camp there. Peter would find sneakers washed up on the beach and he’d be happy he found his next pair of shoes. They didn’t match, but sort of fit each time. We’d find rations in cans that were still sealed that had washed up a lot from ships, and we’d cook and eat them out there on the beach. My friends and I would camp out there too and make fires.
When I was older I took a scuba diving course in Monterey and was into that for a while. Most of my dives were in Monterey. I dove for abalone up north.
CZ: Tell me about your background and interest in boats and boat work.
MH: After high school I thought “oh shit, I have to get a job”.. I had to make money and figure out what I wanted to do. I moved onto a houseboat in Sausalito and started doing bright work on wooden sailboats. There was this harbor in town called Pelican Harbor that used to be all wooden boats. I started working there and word spread that I was around and available. I learned as I went and got better and better at it. There was this marine supply store in Sausalito that isn’t there anymore, and the staff was really nice – they’d give me advice on varnish and brushes to use. Some of the boats I worked on were hauled out, most in the water. I charged $200.00 a boat, so I think I made about $2.00 an hour! I had an ad out in the sailing magazine Latitude 38 for my bright work.
I got into sailing in beer can races and some ocean races: to the Farallon Islands and around the lightship/bucket buoy outside the Golden Gate. I started giving tours at the Bay Model in Sausalito and saw an ad for docents to work aboard the Californian (historic tall ship) on her SF Bay cruises. The ad called for someone who could sail, was familiar with local history, and could sing shanties – In addition to nautical and navigational knowledge I had always sung in a performing chorus, so it fit really well. I had a lot of fun doing those cruises.
CZ: How would you describe the waterfront of Sausalito, and what have you seen change there for better or worse?
MH: Sausalito used to be a working harbor town, and it took years to transition into a tourist town. It has that extreme tourist reputation, but it’s not entirely true. There are some expensive areas and some aren’t at all – there’s a combo of rich and poor. The funky docks used to be Gate 5, Issaquah, Yellow Dock. Now it’s only really Gate 5 that’s still funky. There are a lot less anchor-outs than there used to be. In my opinion it was becoming a bit of a slum, and the pollution issue was getting gross. There should be room for everyone and not just the rich, but I don’t think that was a rich vs. poor fight – it was truly a sewage issue that needed to be dealt with. A lot of the people out there were going over the side of their boat – I mean that’s not cool.
There were periods of time that the Sausalito waterfront was really funky – after World War II in particular when the Marin Ships industry closed down abruptly, leaving behind vacant ship building facilities and infrastructure. Artists moved into the waterfront in put-together houseboats, and one of the large ship buildings in particular became an artist’s collective and still is – the ICB Building. Another is run by the Army Corpse of Engineers and is the Bay Model Building.
CZ: Tell me about Marin Ships
MH: Marin Ships was the shipyards constructed overnight in Sausalito to build Liberty Ships for World War II cargo transport. It was developed along the more remote north western end of town. Hills were blasted and bay lands filled-in to make the shipyards. It looks really different now than it did historically because of this mass construction. Huge Quonset-hut style buildings were put up in a hurry, docks and piers were built, a track and haul-out system was created. Crews, mostly women and blacks, worked 24/7 building ships there to send overseas for the war effort. An entire ship was constructed in a month or less, and sent out the Golden Gate. The whole thing lasted from 1942-1945, and then was abandoned.
When I was a volunteer at the Bay Model, the Sausalito Historic Society put up money to build a Marin Ships exhibit on the premises. The first exhibit builders didn’t work out, so I was asked to meet with the head of the Historic Society, and they offered me the job after hearing what I thought needed to be done on the exhibit. I worked on it until completion in collaboration with the architect who was down the street at the ICB building, and members of the Historic Society, as well as ex Marin Ships workers as guides for how the displays should go. They would stop by with ideas or alterations to be made and we went along that way. I built all the display cases, designed their placement, and made decisions as to what artifacts should go where. I also built the theatre which is part of the exhibit. It was a fun job. I’m proud I was a part of it.
CZ: I heard a rumor you lived aboard the dry-docked Wapama for a while. Please describe this boat and your experiences there:
MH: The Wapama was a historic logging steam schooner built in 1915 in Oregon that ran along the west coast delivering mail and supplies to the north coast, and returning with timber. It basically was what the flat-bed logging trucks are now before there were good roads to Mendocino. Logs were loaded onto these steamers by lumber shoots at various stops along the north coast. These boats were built fast, and they only usually lasted 10 or 20 years because they were worked to death. The Wapama is the last one left. It was purchased by the California State Parks to preserve it, and it ended up at Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco on display with the other historic vessels. Over time it began to bow and would have eventually sunk, so it was put on a barge and first brought to Oakland for a while before the Army Corpse agreed to house it up on the pier in Sausalito next to the Bay Model.
When I was working at the Bay Model as a tour leader there was a period of time I was staying at the Marin Headlands youth hostel a bunch, and needed a place to live. The supervisor at the Bay Model offered for me to live on the Wapama, which was great. There were a couple of other guys living on it from the restoration crew I think. They were characters – one guy was a Hawaiian named Kawika with no front teeth, and a gnarly tattoo from his time in Vietnam. No one was using the captain’s quarters, so I moved in there. It was a trip living on that boat. It was huge with cavernous holds below decks. It was made entirely of Douglas fir – huge timbers for support beams. You had to climb up these big staircases to get between decks. It was a great time living there and walking to work at the Bay Model, downtown for sushi, sitting back for a beer alone in the wheel house enjoying prime views of the Bay. It had a smell that’s hard to explain that only old - really old - wooden boats have. The only bad thing was the Sausalito Ferry graveyard crew next to the pier making noise in the middle of the night.
I led tours on the Wapama for a long time. You could turn on the engines, which were massive, to show everyone how they worked. Every year there was a big party called the Steam Schooner Meet aboard the Wapama, with sea shanty contests, beer and wine.. it was great. It got really hard to upkeep the boat for the Park Service, so I think the Wapama is back at Point Richmond last I heard.
CZ: What was your first encounter at the Point Bonita Lighthouse, and what inspired you to get involved there?
MH: The military transfer and clean-up of the Marin Headlands and Point Bonita facilities to the Park Service had occurred, and I heard they were starting a lighthouse volunteer program. I’ve always been into lighthouses and navigational systems, and I was in the first wave of volunteers trained to give the tours. There was a really great crew of knowledgeable rangers to train the volunteers then. I’ve been there for 22 years, and I have always mainly led the monthly full moon hikes at Point Bonita. A couple of us early docents had so much energy and fun with our tours that we developed a following. Sometimes the weather and visibility is bad on the tour but that’s more fun, because we tell more stories and interact individually with the participants better. People sometimes question my crazy references and stories, and I tell them look it up if you don’t believe me! The Wild West was here. It was insane, dangerous and crazy 24/7 around San Francisco and the coast – it was f***ing nuts. For instance the mystique of sea shanties, which are usually tales of the brutality of early sailing life and getting your ass kicked. Or the romantic notion of the Barbary Coast – give me a break! It was opium dens and whore houses. People were regularly mugged, raped, and beaten-up. “Shanghai-ing” started in San Francisco due to the high number of crewmembers abandoning the harsh life of the sea for the gold fields of the Sierras. Ship companies would pay bars and sometimes the police to drug or beat a person, and kidnap them onto a ship setting sail for the open seas as crew. Shanghai in China was a common port of call for ships leaving San Francisco then.. It could have been called Honolulu’d or Manila’d I guess!
Mike is a major hiker, and this was his response when I asked him what
some of his favorite coastal hikes and sites were: leaving by foot from his
house in Sausalito, walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, along Crissy Field
and the SF waterfront to Hyde Street or Aquatic Park – sometimes further
– through the Presidio, back over the bridge, into the Marin Headlands,
down into Mill Valley and back to Sausalito. He also still loves hiking the
more remote areas of the north coast he explored as a child with Uncle Peter
and friends
Things have changed with park rules for volunteers and Mike is not leading as many tours at the Point Bonita Lighthouse in the Marin Headlands as he’d like to, but he’s usually there on full moon, and will be for the March and April tours. For more info: http://www.parksconservancy.org/calendar/index.asp?event=1299
Mike (right) on Bolinas Beach with siblings 1969
Nancy Heiner
Mike giving full moon tour at Point Bonita Lighthouse
Georgette Osserman
Point Bonita Light House
Georgette Osserman
