Sausalito Houseboat Wars — What Really Happened

Pirates of Sausalito: Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery is a work of fiction, but inspired by real events. Here is what did happen. 

Sausalito Houseboat Wars: What Really Happened?

Here’s a video of a presentation I delivered at the Mill Valley Library on May 1, 2024, focusing on the real history my book is based on.

Last fall, I pitched a librarian there on hosting a book reading, and she connected me with the Mill Valley Historical Society. They asked me to talk more about the history my book is based on than about the novel itself, which was a brilliant idea because we had a full house and I can’t imagine that many people would have come if I were talking only about my book.

Below the video, I’ve included links to some of the excerpts I read during the talk, as well as others that I was not able to include.

Highlights:

Excerpts, References, Links, and More

Below are links to newspaper and magazine articles, video clips of TV newscasts from the Sausalito Waterfront, columns from the Sausalito Historical Society, and more. But first, here’s how Pirates of Sausalito starts:

In 1942, as the United States joined World War II, Bechtel Corporation opened a shipyard in Sausalito. Called Marinship, it employed 20,000 workers, who built 93 cargo ships and oil tankers in three years.

Workers came from all over for jobs at the ship factory, but housing was scarce. Marin County’s Housing Authority and the federal government teamed up to create Marin City and build housing for 6,000 workers. 

Still not enough. Many workers lived on old boats or jerry-rigged them from whatever they could scrounge. 

After the war, Bechtel abandoned the shipyard, and boatbuilder Donlon Arques bought 20-plus acres of waterfront property, full of shipbuilding debris. The land was considered worthless. 

Arques dragged old boats, like decommissioned ferries, onto the mudflats and rented them to soldiers returning from the war. He charged little or no rent, and his landlord style could be generously described as “benign neglect.” Others called it anarchy. 

Artists, craftsmen, beatniks, and bohemians built homes on barges and rafts. Out of packing crates, railroad cars, motor homes. These floating homes—most were not true houseboats as they were not navigable—connected to land on ramshackle walkways or floating docks made from styrofoam and plywood. 

Residents included British philosopher Alan Watts, cartoonist Shel Silverstein, and singer Otis Redding, who wrote “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” while staying on a houseboat. 

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, after the infamous Summer of Love in San Francisco turned dark, hippies from the Haight arrived, seeking free love and free living. 

Arques’ property, known as the “Gates,” named after the ship factory entrances, became the epicenter of Sausalito’s development battles of the ’70s. City leaders tried to clean up and clear out the houseboats, citing the lack of sewage hookups. Not to mention the loud parties. Arques was forced to sell. Then the evictions started.

You may have read about the houseboat wars in the San Francisco Chronicle or watched news anchors Dennis Richmond or Dave McElhatton reporting live from the Sausalito waterfront as houseboaters in dinghies pushed away police boats with oars and protesters went limp as they were dragged into paddywagons.

But do you want to hear the true story? Do you? 

OK, then. 

This is what really happened.

But then the rest of the book is made up. The setting and the broad strokes of the houseboat wars story are based on and inspired by real events. It’s the characters who are fictional — as the disclaimer boilerplate goes, any resemblance between the characters and persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

 Excerpts, References, Links, and More

HOUSEBOAT COMMUNITY

HOUSEBOAT WARS


ANCHOR-OUTS

A variation on the conflict continues today, with the authorities trying to clear out the anchor-outs, boats that are not docked and stay in Richardson longer than allowed by law. Many of the people in these anchor-outs live on their boats and have nowhere else to live.

 

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