Marine Hospital Cemetery
Dates of Existence: 1874? - 1912, but some graves may still exist today.
Location: Presidio, north of the old Public Health Service Hospital Hays Streeet, San Francisco Presidio.
Number interred: 200 to 838.
Moved to: San Francisco National Cemetery.
Records: San Francisco Cemetery Records.
“WHERE JACK IS AT REST. The Secluded Cemetery for Sailors Among the Presidio Hills. ROMANCE OF LITTLE MOUNDS. In This Strange Company Are Gathered Men of Almost Every Nation on Earth.
“If you are fond of long walks in the suburbs of San Francisco, and you happen to wander over to the United States military reservation, your steps may lead to a lonely spot out near the Golden Gate, where, in a valley dreary with stunted growths and hummocks of half-tamed sand dunes, long rows of white posts bearing names and dates, and strangely suggestive of plantation nurseries, intrude upon the landscape. There are fences round these rows of painted boards, and then, as you draw near, there are mounds side by side, all of an equal length, and all sandy, save where nature has spread the golden eschscholtzia, and the blue nemophila amid tufts of weeds.
“The garniture of the wilderness is in perfect harmony with this desert spot, for the place is very wild indeed, secluded from worldly sight by kindly hills and groves, and unknown only to an occasional pedestrian who leaves the beaten path for the Presidio hills. With all its wildness the mounds and the white boards within its rugged borders contain many a romantic story. The story, however, in each instance is a buried romance of the sea. Every little hill marks the grave of a sailor—the resting-place of Jack, where there are no storms—for the acre of mounds in the sailors' cemetery in San Francisco.
“Strange as it may appear, this burial ground has at least 200 hardy fellows under its sod, the men who came from all quarters of the globe to the port of San Francisco and never sailed away again through the Golden Gate. They are the sailors who came up from the sea in ships. It was their lot to brave the ocean through many a tempestuous mood and at last go aloft like any ordinary land-lubber, and after all their watches and wanderings to have only a place among the dreary sand bills, with bits of white-painted boards at their heads.
“How they came to meet this fate is another story that has various interesting points, for around Jack in his troubles and his last struggle the men beside him say there is ever something of the romantic side of life. It may be fate, as the sailor himself would call this characteristic feature, but anyhow it is present. When Jack comes into port from another part of the world and feels the hand of sickness pressing heavily upon him, he forsakes his bunk for a bed provided by Uncle for him in the Marine Hospital. It matters not what his nationality may be, so long as he is a sailor he belongs to the Republic of the High Seas and the great leveler in life—the sea— is his guarantee of solicitude. And so out in the Government institution in Richmond there are constantly 100 sailors gathered from all lands and suffering the common ills of humanity. Too often the journey to the hospital proves to be Jack's last voyage on earth, for every month the roll call falls short in the local institution by four or five names. A short walk over the hill and those same names may be upon the white boards, where flowers have not yet begun to bloom upon the sand freshly turned. The rows of whitened boards have simply stretched out a trifle longer in the month, and the extension represents the names that were dropped. For this almost unheard of cemetery within the City's limits is the burial ground of the United States Marine Hospital.
“And what visitor to the spot can say that Jack has not a tender heart? Here are sermons in simplest form. Even amid the unlovely headboards and weeds one may learn a homely lesson from the work of some rough sailors, who are now God knows where. The touches of tenderness left upon the sandy mounds appeal to one with a pathetic earnestness, though, after all, they be nothing more than wooden monuments and frames, or fences, for an occasional grave, a tiny marble slab or a cluster of flowering plants.
” 'About the last thing the crews of ships have done in San Francisco before sailing,' said an officer of the hospital, pointing toward the few monuments, 'was to come out here and decorate the graves of their dead comrades. “The crew of an English ship lost a comrades.
” 'The crew of an English ship lost a comrade who was buried here. They contributed enough out of their wages to buy a fence and head monument, and the day before their ship sailed for home they were out here at the grave. Then they had a photograph taken of the monument to show in England that they had done everything in their power for their shipmate.
” 'Some of the other fences and flowers were placed there by friends of the sailors. Those people knew the men buried here and they came and put up monuments and sowed flowers upon the graves. They were all seamen, and as far as I knew had nothing in commcn more than a warm heart for one another.'
“These dead sailors form a strange company as they lie side by side. They sailed Francisco in ships from every land under the sun, except Turkey. As an illustration of the extraordinary diversity of nationality, it was stated that the sailors who died and were buried there since last August, were natives of the following countries, arranged according to the chronological order of burials: Denmark, Ireland. Austria, New Mexico, Germany, Australia, Chile, Finland, New York, Greece, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, France, Finland, Jamaica, Wisconsin, Germany, Texas, Sweden, Peru. Illinois, Hawaii, Germany, Norway, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Cape de Verde islands, England, Prussia, Alaska, Spain, Italy, Scotland, Portugal. South America, China, Hindostan, West Indies and Africa have also contributed their quota to the cemetery. The proportion of Americans is remarkably small, which fact is accounted for by the American preference for a life on land, and also by the better treatment as a rule accorded sailors on American ships.
“In this connection the question no doubt arises, what is it that carries off so many able men?
“There is a belief that sailors succumb to acquired diseases, accidents on board ship and sickness brought on by exposure. The United States Marine Hospital Service report for 1894 shows that fifty-six men of the sea died that year. These cases are divided into general diseases, 25; local, 20; injuries, 2. Consumption ended the days of seventeen of this number and only one man succumbed to scurvy.
“The other diseases that proved fatal were of the nervous, circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems. This is news to many landsmen, who imagined that Jack was usually drowned, or died according to some queer belief about sailors. The strangest of it all may be this—that as a rule Jack finds his last resting place ashore, and that the number who go to Davy Jones are infinitely in the minority.
“When the summons comes for Jack to go aloft he is dressed in his own clothes, that is the apparel he wore on entering the institution. Then they place him, this rough sailor, with his dress of the sea, which perhaps still savors of the salt air and the unctuous pitch, into a plain, stout redwood coffin. There is not much ado over his interment. He is put under the sand with a board at his head, and, at least—he is with his mates.”
Source: San Francisco Call, 29 March 1896, page 19.
”…located just beyond the closed Public Health Service Hospital near 15th Avenue and Lake Street, is invisible. The graves, which once had neat wooden headstones enclosed by a fence, were buried under 16 feet of debris from excavations of a missile site in the 1950s… The cemetery had its beginnings more than 130 years ago when the U.S. Treasury Department leased land at the Presidio to set up the San Francisco Marine Hospital, which took care of the health needs of merchant mariners. The hospital opened in 1875. In 1881, the adjacent cemetery was first mentioned in records of the Marine Hospital Service. Burials continued there for at least 31 years, or until 1912…”
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, “SAN FRANCISCO, Merchant seamen forgotten in death, Mariners' cemetery buried in debris, used as parking lot”, Carl Nolte, 25 November 2006. article online
”… Subsurface remains of the cemetery associated with the early history of this facility exist, and lie largely beneath an extensive paved court and parking area located on the rise near the southwest corner of the upper plateau. Historical research suggests that a substantial cemetery once existed behind the former Marine Hospital. While records could not be found to establish that the burials of the cemetery had been relocated, the Army assumed that a relocation had taken place. In 1990 the Army conducted a test excavation in an area presumed to have been the Marine Hospital Cemetery and found the remains of two burials below almost 15 feet of concrete rubble. In 2002, field investigations for environmental remediation of Landfill 8 by the Trust also encountered human remains near the ground surface (URS 2003). Historical research suggests that the remains of approximately 500 to 600 individuals are interred in the cemetery. …”
Source: Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, The Public Health Service Hospital at the Presidio of San Francisco (August 2004), page 147. (Cemetery Library)
”… The Marine Cemetery, located north of the present-day hospital, was created in the late 1880s to bury those who died while at the hospital. The list of burials, which is estimated to include as many as 585 graves, includes sailors from around the world, ranging from Scandinavia to the Hawaiian Islands. The cemetery was used until approximately 1915, when interments stopped. Photos taken in the 1930s make it clear that the cemetery was maintained with neat rows of white grave markers. Photos from the 1950s indicate that the grave markers were no longer present, although the cemetery site can be clearly distinguished. In 1969, in order to construct a large parking lot north of the hospital that could be connected to the hospital by a pedestrian bridge, fill was added on top of the western portion of the cemetery to provide a level grade for the parking lot. Excavations performed in 1994 in the area of the former cemetery identified human remains under approximately 10 feet of fill, confirming that the grave sites remain to this day. …”
Source: Environmental Assessment, The Public Health Service Hospital at the Presidio of San Francisco (February 2004), Appendix A page 8. (Cemetery Library)
“Eventually all remains discovered on the reservation were moved to the national cemetery, the unknown remains being buried in the plot for the Unknowns.”
“On January 24, 1874, Secretary of War William Belknap granted a revocable lease to Treasury for the Presidio land and by 1875 the Marine Hospital, a collection of wood frame buildings, stood on a terrace overlooking Mountain Lake. For several years the Army had leased acreage in this same area to a civilian who grew vegetables on it and who, in return, supplied the troops with part of his produce. The hospital continued this practice at first allowing the lessee to cultivate 8.5 acres. Eventually the Army became concerned that the garden, which had grown to forty acres, and the hospital stables threatened the purity of the Presidio's water supply and asked the Hospital Surgeon to discontinue gardening.
“In 1902 the Marine Hospital Service became the U.S. Public Health Service, still under Treasury, but the old name of Marine Hospital remained in common usage. Five years later Maj. William Harts, planning the Presidio's future, recommended that the hospital be removed from the Presidio, perhaps to Angel Island.
“By 1932 the hospital buildings, almost sixty years old, had become overcrowded and their frame construction posed a constant fire hazard. Treasury concluded to tear down the buildings and construct a reinforced concrete hospital building immediately to the west on a terrace that overlooked the city. Three buildings from that first hospital survived the change: senior enlisted men's quarters (1807), built in 1920; officer's quarters (1809), built in 1920; and officer's quarters (1810), built in 1915. The old hospital cemetery, in which no interments had been made for many years, also remained north of the hospital proper.”
Source: “Special History Study. Presidio of San Francisco, An Outline of Its Evolution as a U.S. Army Post, 1847-1990.” Presidio of San Francisco, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, pages 157 and 163. (Cemetery Library)
“In use from 1881-1912… first official mention of a cemetery associated with this hospital occurs in 1881 …it seems likely that the cemetery could have been in operation for as long as the hospital had been there: since 1874 …around 1950, the Treasury Department had allocated funds for the hospital to remove the cemetery to San Bruno …the cemetery was never removed …the cemetery was covered over by dirt excavated during the installation of the Nike missile site just north of the hospital (completed in 1954) …Disarticulated human remains were recovered [from trenching in the cemetery area] in both instances [1995 and 2002]”
Source: “The Marine Hospital Cemetery, Presidio of San Francisco, California.” Jennifer McCann, The Presidio Archaeology Center, 2006. (Cemetery Library)
Back to top
