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OPPOSITE: A line is run between for their enterprising spirit, cunning insights, competitive two feet in length, were first made in the United States at the
a Whitehall boat and a ship that instincts, and lifesaving rescues. From its modest beginning, foot of Whitehall Street in New York City to ferry goods and
has arrived in San Francisco Bay their enterprise steadily grew and became the foundation upon sailors on and off boats coming into the harbor, and they
in the late 1800s. Tom Crowley got
his start by operating one of these which a family business prospered and survived over the next eventually made their way to the San Francisco Bay.
Whitehall boats, competing with hundred years, overcoming natural disasters, civic corruption, Among the bleaker tasks San Francisco boatmen performed
other Whitehall boatmen along the the Great Depression, two World Wars, labor unrest, and to make a living included fishing out corpses from the bay
waterfront to reach incoming ships recessions that sank most of their competitors. waters and rescuing people who attempted suicide. In 1884, the
first and offer shore services on city paid $10 per corpse and $5 for a rescued drowning person.
behalf of businesses in town.
A LIFE ON THE WATER When an incoming vessel raised a red flag up its mast,
RIGHT: David Crowley, Tom Thomas Crowley was born in 1875 as Thomas Bannon in San it would signal a request for boatmen. That sent boatmen
Crowley’s adoptive father, stands in Francisco to Irish immigrant parents. His father, a Whitehall scurrying for their oars, because being first was everything—
front of one of the Whitehall boats boatman, died of tuberculosis when Tom was sixteen months it typically won them the right to provide services for the
with which he made his living. old. When David Crowley, a fellow Irish immigrant who also
made a living with Whitehalls, married the young Bannon
widow and adopted her two children, Tom was renamed
Thomas Crowley.
Finding work was a means of survival and in 1890, at the
age of fifteen, Thomas Crowley quit school and went to work
as a boat boy, rowing a Whitehall for a sailors’ boardinghouse.
He was paid $5 a week to transport sailors and boardinghouse
runners to and from ships in San Francisco Bay. Two years
later, at the age of seventeen, Crowley purchased an eighteen-
foot Whitehall boat for $80 and began a water-taxi service,
delivering supplies, passengers, and crew members to and
from ships anchored in the San Francisco Bay.

A BOATMAN’S CALLING
On San Francisco’s waterfront, Whitehall boatmen were
renowned for being skilled oarsmen and sailors, and that
reputation extended across the major United States ports.
Whitehall rowboats, which range from fourteen to twenty-

• Early Days • 21