Swede’s Dark Side

By Larry Clinton, President

Two weeks ago we presented a story about hometown boy Swede Pedersen, a Sausalito fireman who saved so many lives in and around town that one survivor dubbed him a “blonde angel.”  But there was another side to Swede, born out of the hardscrabble Depression years, when he and a gang of kids who dubbed themselves “Jackals of the Fog” tried to weasel in on Sausalito’s rum running scene.  This first person account is excerpted from the book “One Eye Closed The Other Red” – the California bootlegging years.”

At the beginning when bootlegging wended its way into the area, everyone seemed to have gotten into the game. The natural coastal approaches, the multitude of fishing and pleasure crafts, the depression era and the lack of law enforcers to cover such a wide and isolated area, everyone had a try at bootlegging.

Across the Walhalla tavern was Nunes Bros. Boatyard. We would gain entrance to a boat and use it as an outpost. We would not take anything and were careful to leave the boat as it was when we left it.

Approximately 4:00 a.m. one foggy morning with numerous fog horns moaning in the background, our lookout heard noises.

A large rowboat barely visible in the low fog was working toward the Walhalla beach. At this early hour and with such dense fog there were no problems being observed. We heard the keel of the rowboat beaching on the sand so we watched the unloading, which was quick and professional.

After watching the boat pull out and making sure no one else was around we crawled along the beach and under the boathouse ways to the beach side of the Walhalla.

The Walhalla porch area was on pilings with the basement closed with planking down into the beach sand. The old driftwood door was padlocked as usual. We dug down into the sand along the plank about four feet deep. We made sure we wouldn’t have a cave-in, then all but one of us slid into the entrance and inside the basement.

With matches we located the booze cache. This wasn’t local homemade product. Here were cases of first grade liquor wrapped in straw.  Rum, scotch, bourbon, cognac and gin. We could tell rumrunners brought this load through the Golden Gate off the mother ship from Canada or South America.

We were smart enough not to touch this load. We dug under and extracted a dozen bottles from broken cartons of a previous load.

After wrapping the bottles in our jackets to avoid any clinking noises, we passed them up through the entrance hole. We smoothed and covered our tracks in the sand and got the hell out of the area.

We laid low for a few days getting the feel of things. No one was aware of our two-bit hijacking job!

Not knowing how to properly cash in on our possession we traded  bottles to the movie operator at the Princess Theatre for free passes (in the back door) and for watermelons and other fruit from the produce man.

By playing it cool and not trying to flood the market we didn’t run into much trouble. Although we were just drops in a bucket full of water, we felt big!

It didn’t take long before the syndicate entered the game. This was where we got off. The syndicate played rough and for keeps.

My buddy and I overheard that a cache of booze (not imported) was under a garage foundation next to the Princess Theatre. We checked out the area and saw two gunnysacks below the garage floorboards.

This was a quick drop so we crawled under the narrow foundation opening. We finally pulled the booze out into the open but we were looking up at a couple of mean, mad individuals at the same time.

We had no excuse, we were way off base. We knew better. They bruised us up plenty where it didn’t show.

Other times we would fill our lunch packs with several bottles and wait for the hay trucks heading through Fort Baker, Fort Barry, and Point Bonita to get to Sam Silva’s ranch and Jolly’s ranch by the ocean. We would hop the hay truck on the last steep grade out of Sausalito. As we stopped at various points, the soldiers, Coast Guard and ranch hands would claim their goodies. When pickings were scarce we would walk along the beaches gathering whiskey bottles floating in from passing ships and with the tides from San Francisco. Whiskey bottles being a premium, we were paid from two cents for a half pint to 25 cents for a gallon jug.

While visiting up in new town, I was taken down in the basement of a home and shown a full working still by my school friend. While looking and sampling we heard cars stopping along side the house.

As footsteps were pounding in our direction my friend pulled me by the belt and we both crawled into and behind a false-built wall near the retain­ing wall.

You guessed it! It was a raid! I was sweating behind that wall copying my friend giving Hail Marys and anyone else’s name who needed hailing as long as we wouldn’t be discovered.

The still was smashed, the equipment knocked over. After what seemed forever, the prohis left and we crawled out, not lingering long enough to inhale the potent fumes.

I found I wasn’t built to get involved with the hard core crowd.

Bootlegging became a serious game. Floating dead in the bay, a ditch or wasting away in a jail cell, these were the top choices. We all settled down to safer and better things like avoiding getting hit by a speeding car.

“One Eye Closed The Other Red” by Clifford James Walker, is part of the Sausalito Historical Society collection.

Federal Prohibition officers, know as “prohis,” dogged young Swede Pedersen and other Sausalito bootleggers.

Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society.

Swede Pedersen: The Blond Saint

By Larry Clinton, President

You’ve probably heard of Swede’s Beach, the small secluded hideaway on Shelter Cove down some rickety stairs at the end of Valley Street in Sausalito’s “old town.”  The man the beach is named after, Ralph “Swede” Pedersen, was quite a local legend.

According to the January, 1960 issue of Marin This Month magazine, “Swede grew up in Sausalito and once reminisced that when he was a youngster there wasn’t much for boys to do -- except scaring bootleggers who used Shelter Cove for rum running. ‘It’s a wonder we weren’t killed,’ he marveled.”

But Swede could take care of himself at an early age, winning a Golden Gloves light heavyweight trophy when he was 18. After duty during WWII in the Pacific with the Army Engineers, Swede worked as a rigger at Marinship, and after the war ended began his fireman car­eer under Sausalito Fire Chief Matthew J. Perry. He served as a fire­man and first aid specialist, and his work on the ambulance drew the respect and gratitude of “hund­reds of Southern Marinites and unfortunate accident victims on Highway 101,” according to the magazine, which reported: “It was one of these who called him a saint. A woman phoned the Sausalito News to ask, ‘Who is that huge blond saint on the Sausalito ambulance?’ She con­tinued: ‘It was an awful acci­dent, and when I came to that great man had hold of my hand and was talking to me so calmly and so surely that all the screams I had ready just died away, and I knew I was going to be alright’.”

Marin this Month added: “When Swede Pedersen was told that someone called him a saint it knocked him put. ‘Saints are getting mighty pe­culiar if I’m supposed to be like one,’ he retorted. And he didn’t look pleased or modest. As far as he was concerned someone had made a fool remark.”

Swede married Patricia Elk in 1944, and they had three children.  But, noted the magazine, “more than any other one person in Sausalito, his spare time is devoted to all the youngsters of Sausalito.

“He has been with Little League since it started and he is in the middle of every phase of its op­eration. He is on the local com­mittee for the Boy Scouts of America and was one of the first to be called upon to assist in the formation of the new Sausalito Committee for Teenagers.

“Despite all his activities, Swede has become decidedly portly, which makes for a more authentic Santa Claus that flies into Sausa­lito every Christmas season. Greeting this Santa Claus who works for them about every day of the year, are most of the city’s youngsters, a few of whom he has delivered himself when the stork’s wings caught up with the ambu­lance .

“But wherever he is his ear is stretched towards the fire horn that has hauled him for 16 years out of parties, movies, bed and church.

“We didn’t interview Swede for this article - - he would have laughed us down the street - but his wife Pat told us with assur­ance, ‘Swede would hear that whistle if he were in Sacramento’.”

Santa Swede at Vina del Mar Park fountain circa 1960.

Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society

Fritz Crackers Returns

By Larry Clinton, President
Under the nom de plume Fritz Crackers, Phil Frank produced a weekly comic strip in the Marin Scope from 1977-1984, gently lampooning the local scene. This installment was triggered by the rerouting of the Golden Gate Transit Bus Route 20 in September, 1983.  The 20 was shifted from Sausalito to Marin City to pick up passengers going to Central Marin during the daytime, resuming service on Bridgeway in the early evening.
Many Sausalitans were infuriated that the decision to eliminate daytime stops along Bridgeway was made without their input.  As the Marin Scope reported:
“At the request of City officials, the Marin County Board of Supervisors (sitting as the Marin County Transit District Board) has agreed to discuss the Route 20 service and how it has affected bus patrons at its Tuesday, December 6 meeting, which begins at 9 am.
Despite repeated requests from the City and the Chamber of Commerce, the Bridge Board and the Marin County Transit District Board have declined to accept an invitation to attend an evening public hearing in Sausalito to hear from residents regarding the reduction in daytime service to Sausalito.
“Since it will be impossible for many people to attend the early morning weekday meeting, residents and concerned citizens are invited to complete the questionnaire which appears on page 6.
“The Golden Gate Bridge Board of Directors has told the City it needs to hear from bus patrons affected by the route change in order to make changes in its policy.
“Anyone who is interested in attending the December 6 meeting can request transportation. Car pools will leave the Civic Center at approximately 8:30.”
Phil’s imagination ran wild with what might happen to an unsuspecting passenger who got caught on the rerouted bus without warning.
In conjunction with Phil Frank Day in Sausalito, the Sausalito Historical Society presents a new exhibition of  Fritz Crackers. strips, many of which are surprisingly relevant today. This exhibition encourages visitors to discover the man behind the humor. Exhibition sponsors include the Sausalito Art Festival Foundation, the Sausalito Lions Club, and Historical Society members.
An opening reception will take place on Saturday, March 31, from 6-8 PM at the Society’s newly renovated Exhibition Gallery on the second floor of Sausalito City Hall, 420 Litho St. The exhibition will be open to the public through Labor Day. Call the Sausalito Historical Society at 415-289-4117 for more information.

The Priest and the “Heathen”

By Larry Clinton, President
What follows is a continuation of the journal of Father Vicente Santa Maria, aboard the San Carlos, the first Spanish vessel to explore San Francisco Bay in 1775.   After  Frigate-lieutenant Juan de Ayala found a safe anchorage for the ship, he began dispatching a longboat to explore the nearby coastline.  Father Santa Maria records a number of distant encounters with Indians (whom he sometimes calls “the Heathen”).  Although the natives appeared friendly, hailing the Spanish sailors and leaving gifts on the beach, both groups were wary of making actual physical contact.  After a few days of sizing each other up, the captain gave permission for Father Santa Maria, two sailing masters and the ship’s surgeon to “communicate at close quarters with those poor unfortunates who so persistently desired us to do so, and by easy steps to bring them into close terms with us and make them the readier when the time should come for attracting them to our Holy Faith.”  Here are the priest’s recollections of that first encounter.
“As we came near the shore, we wondered much to see Indians, lords of these coasts, quite weaponless and obedient to our least sign to them to sit down, doing just as they were bid. There remained standing only one of the eldest, who mutely made clear to us with what entire confidence we should come ashore to receive a new offering which they had prepared for us at the shore’s edge.
“Keeping watch all round to see if among the hills any treachery were afoot, we came in slowly, and when we thought ourselves safe we went ashore, the first sailing master in the lead. There came forward to greet him the oldest Indian, offering him at the end of a stick a string of beads like a rosary, made up of white shells interspersed with black knots in the thread on which they were strung. Then the rest of us landed, and at once the Indian mentioned above (who came as leader among them) showed us the way to the place where they had made ready for us a number of baskets, some filled with pinole [maize flour bread] and others with loaves made with a distinctly sulphurous material that seemed to have been kneaded with some sort of oil, though its odor was so slight that we could not decide what it might be. The sailing master accepted everything and at once returned the favour with earrings, glass beads, and other trinkets. The Indians who came on this occasion were nine in number, three being old men, two of them with sight impaired by cataracts of some sort. The six others were young men of good presence and fine stature.
“They were by no means filthy, and the best favoured were models of perfection; among them was a boy whose exceeding beauty stole my heart. One alone of the young men had several dark blue lines painted from the lower lip to the waist and from the left shoulder to the right, in such a way as to form a perfect cross. God grant that we may see them worshipping so sovereign an emblem.
“It would have seemed natural that these Indians, in their astonishment at our clothes, should have expressed a particular surprise, and no less curiosity; but they gave no sign of it. Only one of the older Indians showed himself a little unmannerly toward me; seeing that I was a thick-bearded man, he began touching the whiskers as if in surprise that I had not shaved long since. We noticed an unusual thing about the young men: none of them ventured to speak and only their elders replied to us. They were so obedient that, notwithstanding we pressed them to do so, they dared not stir a step unless one of the old men told them to; so meek that, even though curiosity prompted them, they did not raise their eyes from the ground; so docile that when my companions did me reverence by touching their lips to my sleeve and then by signs told them to do the same thing, they at once and with good grace did as they were bid.”
The translation of Father Santa Maria’s journal, complete with illustrations and early maps of the Bay Area, is available for viewing at the Historical Society, which is open to the public Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 am to 1 pm.


Coastal Miwoks were peaceful hunter-gatherers for perhaps half a millennium before the Spanish arrived.

Spanish Explorers in S.F. Bay

By Larry Clinton, President

This tale of the first Spanish vessel to visit San Francisco Bay has been excerpted from a translation of the journal of Father Vicente Santa Maria, aboard the supply ship San Carlos under the command of Frigate-lieutenant Juan de Ayala in the year 1775.  It provides a glimpse into how precarious such explorations could be:

It was thought impossible that His Majesty’s supply ship San Carlos should make an expedition. Though sailing under orders on other occasions, she was never to be counted on since her mission could never be accomplished as the orders called for. The best that could happen to her was to escape being wrecked or to have a few days’ relief from danger. Even on this voyage there was no confidence in her at the start, since the first moves she made while yet at San Blas [Mexico] were omens of bad luck; just as she was getting to open water she ran aground, and as she kept pounding on the sand she was in danger of breaking up.

Even the least fainthearted were terror-struck, so many and so great were the alarms that popular rumour scattered abroad; but as matters turned out, without dire mishaps the San Carlos arrived in a hundred and one days at the harbour of Monterey. We stayed as long as it took to unload cargo, renew our supplies of water, get firewood, and do other things needful for the farther part of our journey.

On the morning of the 27th of July, favoured by a southwest wind, we set sail from the harbour of Monterey for that of San Francisco. We went on so well that by the 31st we had made six leagues. This was owing not so much to the ocean currents, we thought, as to our holy father St. Francis, in whose honour we were holding a novena.

The same good luck continued, so that neither rough seas nor strong contrary winds were enough to put us in desperate case by disabling us, or to vex us by holding us back.

So it was that on the 5th day of August, at 8 o’clock in the morning, the captain decided that the first sailing master should take the longboat and make a reconnaissance of the shore and the entranceway to the harbour so that the ship might enter safely. The long-boat was thus employed all that day and the night following.

At sunset we lost sight of the longboat. This made the captain feel anxious and exposed to danger, and with good reason. The wind favoured and he wished to take advantage of the clear night to enter the harbour; but he feared that the longboat, in changing direction from going northerly along the shore of the San Francisco peninsula to easterly in the Golden Gate,  had lost sight of us, and with that the chances of success were not good at all. Nevertheless, his fears could only be allayed by reaching his goal, so the captain decided on following with the utmost caution the course indicated by the direction the longboat had taken. A great help to us in doing so—and we were now at the entranceway to the harbour—was a crescent moon that could be seen ahead of us above a high and distant shore.

Neither the very strong currents nor mistrust of striking a submerged rock could check the captain’s resolve not only to make his way into an unknown harbour, but, even more worth remarking, to go in as far as to the place where we should best be anchored. The next day we observed an odd thing, which was that as we were proceeding broadside to an island beyond which, further ahead, there was not much depth, the current and a dead calm stopped us, and it was as if we dropped back. So as not to lose headway it was decided to cast anchor opposite the island of Santa Maria de los Angeles [Angel Island]. Thus we passed the night in anxiety from not knowing the whereabouts of the longboat.

At half past 6 o’clock the next morning the longboat came to the ship. When the captain asked the sailing master why he had not returned the preceding evening, he answered that (after having reconnoitered a good and safe anchorage for the ship)  he had tried to go out to meet her and guide her in but was prevented by the strength of the current against him. He had therefore decided to anchor and pass the night in a cove near the mouth, on the south side.

Next time:  the Spaniards encounter the indigenous “heathens.”