Est. 1851 · Barbary Coast History · Gold Rush Era · Shanghaing / Crimping · San Francisco Maritime History · Jackson Square Legacy Business
The Arkansas left New York in 1849 and arrived in San Francisco Bay on December 20 of that year. Like hundreds of ships abandoned during the Gold Rush as crews deserted for the diggings, she was beached and converted to commercial use. Entrepreneur Joe Anthony cut a hole in the bow, laid down a ramp, and opened the Old Ship Ale House inside her hull. The bar sat at the waterline of the expanding Barbary Coast district, built atop what would become fill as San Francisco pushed Yerba Buena Cove steadily eastward.
The first bartender was 19-year-old James Laflin, a former cabin boy who had arrived aboard the Arkansas. Laflin learned the shanghai trade and refined it at the Old Ship over the following decades, becoming one of the most documented crimpers on the waterfront. The practice was systematic: men were drugged or beaten unconscious, dropped through a trap door or back exit, and delivered to ships' captains who needed crew and asked no questions. They woke at sea.
By 1859 the upper portions of the hull had been dismantled and a hotel built above the remaining buried structure. The current building dates to that period, with the bar continuing on the ground floor. The painted sign reading 'Old Ship Saloon, Henry Klee Prop.' — applied around 1897 — remains visible today. The bar operated under various names through the mid-20th century before Bill Duffy purchased it in 1992 and restored the original name.
In 2016, contractors excavating an adjacent lot for a new building hit the remains of the Arkansas approximately 25 feet underground, including a 15-foot section of false keel. Archaeologists documented the find before reburial. The hull beneath the bar has never been excavated.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Ship_Saloon
- https://www.sfheritage.org/heritage-in-the-neighborhoods/old-ship-saloon/
- https://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/the-old-ship-saloon-where-the-drinks-came-with-a-special-twist/Content?oid=2761382
Phantom soundsCold spotsUnexplained footsteps in cellar
The haunting tradition at the Old Ship Saloon is inseparable from the building's documented history. The trap-door mechanism that Laflin and other crimpers used to move drugged or beaten victims to waiting boats left a specific geography beneath the bar: the buried hull, the cellar passages, the space between the floor planks and the 1849 keel line now 25 feet underground.
Accounts circulating through the bar's ghost-tour reputation describe unexplained sounds in the cellar — shuffling, knocking — and cold spots near the floor that staff attribute to the void spaces within the buried ship structure. The San Francisco ghost-tour industry has included the Old Ship on Barbary Coast walking routes for years, treating Laflin as the primary haunt: the man who knew the layout of every passage below the bar.
No formal paranormal investigation has been published. The accounts are oral and informal, passed between bartenders and regulars. What is documented is that men disappeared from this address for roughly 40 years, taken against their will to ships in the bay. The shanghaiing trade at the Old Ship is as well-evidenced as any criminal practice in the city's 19th-century history. The legend simply places some of those men still below the floor.
Notable Entities
Jimmy Laflin
