THE WEST C STREET cove in 2008. The hull of the Red Baron is visible.
File photo
❒ Longtime operator of West C Street boat yard was ‘delightful, caring guy,’ former shop owner recalls
By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter
Like the derelict boats scattered throughout the Sacramento River Delta and other waterways, the Red Baron apparently was abandoned by its owner after boat yard owner Joe Garske told the man the cost of repairs would exceed the value of the boat, Manuel Lopes said Thursday.
Lopes, former owner of Benicia Antique Shop, 305 First St., knew Garske for many years, and remembers the Red Baron as a halibut fishing boat that came to Benicia from Alaska.
The Red Baron, a barge with a yellow construction crane and other vessels have been popular subjects for artists from Benicia and surrounding cities to paint.
However, those vessels may soon be pulled from the waterway because the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has had an enforcement case concerning the boat yard cove area since 1992.
According to Brad McCrea, director of regulatory affairs, “BCDC has always considered this site and the derelict vessels to be one of its most egregious legacy violations.”
Garske began a cleanup that has been continued even more vigorously by the boat yard’s current owner, Phil Joy.
Joy said Thursday his property has been cleaned of most of the offending objects, except for some pilings he may trim and clad in metal to prevent any creosote contamination of the water.
BCDC representatives have been in talks with Benicia officials and those of CalRecycle about funding the removal of the Red Baron, the barge and its yellow crane, and other remaining vessels that serve as a barrier preventing waves from damaging watercraft at the boat yard.
But when artists learned last week the old ships may be removed, they organized a “paint-out” protest, and several have vowed to attend a Dec. 6 meeting of BCDC in San Francisco.
McCrea and Todd Thalhamer, CalRecycle waste management engineer, said they haven’t found much that is historic in the waters at the boatyard, though that site has been in industrial use in Benicia since at least 1886, according to city records.
But Lopes said the yellow crane attached to the barge was a piece of equipment used in the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, which was finished in 1937.
And, he said, some historic pieces at the boat yard are on land.
Lopes said a green crane that, minus its shovel, is now on land at the boat yard was involved in the creation of the Panama Canal, which began in 1881 and was completed in 1914.
Also at the boat yard: “the beautiful truck,” a Fagol, was brought by Joy along with a Queen Anne Victorian home from Napa. That truck is from a company that was a forerunner of the Peterbilt line, Lopes said.
Garske originally was a plumber who moved to Benicia in the 1930s, Lopes said. After he owned the industrial site at First and West C streets for a few years, he added marine services to its uses in 1958.
Part of that new business was to help Exxon with its water samples, and to help clean up oil spills in the Carquinez Strait and surrounding waters, Lopes said. Garske provided boats that attacked the oil spills.
Oil company ships also tied up at the growing boat yard, and Garske would supply the manpower needed to load those vessels, Lopes said. His involvement with the local refinery, prior to its purchase by Valero, grew when Exxon had problems with equipment in its coke plant that dealt with the dusty but valuable byproduct of refining.
“We’ve had engineers from Texas,” Exxon officials told Garske, but their plant still wouldn’t run properly.
Lopes contrasted the well-educated, sophisticated engineers who failed at the plant’s repairs with Garske, whose education had come from hands-on experience. Garske took an employee, a young man who was a member of the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club, out to the refinery to inspect the problematic plant.
“They found what was wrong and fixed it,” Lopes said. The pair ended up with a contract to keep the plant running.
The job expanded, and at one time, Garske’s involvement with the refinery employed 25 people, Lopes said.
“The technical engineers couldn’t fix it, but old Joe and that kid kept it running,” Lopes said.
Joy agreed with Lopes that some historic items have been pulled out of the cove.
THE WEST C STREET cove last week.
Sue Wilson photo
He said Garske used World War II-era landing craft, the Sponge and the Squeegee, to address oil spills. A third craft, the Double Banger, was made of two vessels united into one.
Joy has removed a World War II landing craft, called a Higgins boat because it was designed by Andrew Jackson Higgins.
He’s found numerous nautical items, such as old compasses, sextants and other marine memorabilia during his share of the cleanups, even before he purchased Garske’s boat yard and its marine services business in 2005.
He’s pulled out other vessels, including barges. Life-saving rings also have been removed from the waters, Joy said. “One says ‘Vaya con Dios,’” he said.
Of the remaining vessels, the barge and crane are on Benicia’s C Street right-of-way, said Charlie Knox, director of Community Development.
Joy said neither the Red Baron nor the Spudes, a pile driver he said was a piece of equipment used in the Richmond outfall, are on his property.
“Everything’s cleaned up on my property, and a lot on the city property,” he said.
He said his site and others, including the city’s share, have been platted into lots, even though they’re underwater.
Joy said he’s heard that plans were made to build up that land to create waterfront property, but the plans fell through. However, the divided lots remain.
Thalhamer said Wednesday that one indicator the remaining vessels could be contaminating the waters is if no marine life is attached to the debris.
“If you do not see marine life attached to the debris, the debris is toxic to marine life. The toxicity is from the application of creosote oils and/or marine paints,” he said.
Joy, however, said he has seen the vessels when the tide is out, and “there’s marine growth everywhere.”
Unlike some military vessels that were coated in lead-based primer, fishing boats had copper-based paint, Joy said. “Boat paint did not have lead,” he said.
Both Joy and Lopes described Garske as kind-hearted and helpful.
Lopes said Garske was “a delightful, caring guy” who “did everything on a handshake.” Both said Garske tried to help boat owners who couldn’t afford full repairs on their vessels.
The boat owners would be welcomed to do some of the work themselves, if they could. But sometimes, such as in the case of the Red Baron, the owner would give up, strip the numbers off the boat, and abandon it at the yard.
“He ran off. The boat got dumped there,” Lopes said. Garske, he said, “gets blamed unfairly.”
While Thalhamer has said a sea wall of some sort would be erected to replace the ships that block the waves that could damage vessels in the boat yard, Joy is worried the replacement wouldn’t be built quickly.
Without that barrier, he can’t operate the business that has been operating at the site since 1958. “I bought that business,” he said.
As for the artists and their efforts to preserve the boats they consider picturesque, Joy said, “They came out there, and said, ‘This is a great spot.’”
He said he frequently sees 10 to 12 people painting the views, particularly the barge and the Red Baron.
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Phil and Celeste Joy are heroes who have have succeeded in improving the environment of that area more than any others in the last thirty years!
Donna Beth Weilenman, thank you for researching these subject matters with Phil and Manuel. Those are two, great and knowledgable men! The Golden Gate and Panama Canal marine equipment remaining in the boatyard cove should be restored and proudly displayed for the public to preserve historical significance; lest we FORGET OR DON’T CARE for ourselves and future generations to ponder WHY OR HOW OR WHAT these WORKS OF ART that built WONDERS OF THE WORLD.
i first met Joe Garske when Mare Island Naval Shipyard was still open. The annual Vallejo Fourth of July parade always included a float from Mare Island in those days. One year, just after Marine World moved to Vallejo, shipyard workers constructed a full size fiberglas whale’s tail for the float that the Shipyard Commander would ride on with other dignitaries. It was used only the one time and sat in storage until a few of us had this idea to plant the tail in shallow waters off Benicia, Berkeley, and Larkspur Landing for a few days at a time then move it, all under the cover of darkness. We needed a local spot to stage the tail from public view when it wasn’t on the move. It had handles on the base so that four of us in wetsuits could carry it from a light trailer into the water, screw down the mud anchors and slip away. Former Police Chief Pierre Bidou cleared the way with Garske and knew the scope of the plan. Garske was absolutely tickled about being part of the deal. When photos showed up in the Benicia Herald and the SF Chronicle front page after we put it off Berkeley, Garske was beaming that this covert temporary sculpture scheme was being run out of his yard. We brought it back from Berkeley and were waiting for the right tide at Larkspur to complete the cycle when somebody anonymously complained to shipyard authorities that we were misappropriating government property. I was directed by senior officials to return the tail with no action taken. This was just before Christmas, so we put it in a fenced compound with two painted round boat fenders that looked like Christmas ornaments hanging off the ends of the flukes, and a sign that said “Whale Jail”. It later found it’s way across the river to the old boatyard near Sperry Mills. That closed down just after Mare Island did but nobody knows what happened to the tail.
Great reporting! Thank you for setting the record straight concerning Mr. Garske. The Garske family has contributed significantly to the city of Benicia and it’s history.
In the late 1980’s, local historian and my pal Peggy Martin contacted me and said she needed entire coastline photos of Benicia as an out-of-town film company wanted to consider Benicia for movie scene locations…I obliged her with my then 35mm, Pentax, film type SLR…we boarded one of Joe Garske’s boats, and the three of us went from one end of town to the other…it was a definite HOOT seeing Benicia from the total waterside…at the end of day, I unloaded the camera, gave the many rolls to Peggy, and what became of them I have no idea. Being onboard with those two was a kick in the pants. Phil Joy and his wife are the perfect legacy to carry on Joe’s earlier work. I say leave the boatworks as they currently are, the gain to the art community and us all is far more immense than stirring up the old crud to remove these artifacts. PB
I feel the character rendered with the antiquity enhances our town’s legacy. Clean up the items that contaminate the strait and ensure erosion is contained. Joe G. was a tough guy on the outside & a gentle soul inside. I crewed with him once or twice in the ’80’s measuring currents to determine the best way to respond to potential leaks near the (old) Benicia Bridge from oil tankers. He was a hard working man from my father’s generation that was a hands on guy. A dear friend of mine was helped by JG in many ways. They were 2 peas in a pod! RIP Joe – You were living history & you will always be remembered.
Phil has worked very hard to get the property in shape the city owes HIM, they need to work with him not fight him.
I used to own a boat repair business in Benicia at Vann’s Landing 830 West I St. 1976-79. If it were not for Joe coming over and propping out the silt build up a couple of times a year, I couldn’t haul out the larger boats on the railway. Joe never let me pay him for his time or fuel. Enough said!