Folder: S.F. Ships-Ferryboats-Capitol City.
Newscopy: "DISMAL DEBRIS - just scraps of lumber and bits of the overhead metal deck rigging, are all that remain of the once-proud riverboat Capitol City, whose former owner, the unquenchable, Barney Gould, had hoped to turn her into a showboat. A storm ended this dream in the Sixth st. channel"
Newscopy: "Remember Barney Gould's Other Boat? The Capitol City, alas, is no more. An Oakland wrecking firm is just completing the job of tearing her to bits and carting the pieces away from the Sixth st. channel where the former Sacramento-San Joaquin riverboat met an inglorious end in 1952. Barney, a stubborn dreamer who still wants to have a theater-restaurant at Aquatic Park aboard an old riverboat, bought the 741-ton Capitol City in 1947. He planned to convert her into a showboat where he and other entertainers could perform oldtime minstreal shows. For several years, she floated placidly at anchor at the Hyde st. pier. Then Barney raised some money and ran the old stern-wheeler to the channel, where she was given a new coat of red, white and blue paint and spruced up. Then disaster struck during the March storms of 1952. Just what happened is still a matter of dispute between Barney and the Port Authority, but all agree that a tug nudged the Capitol City into a piling which tore a 40-foot hole in her hull. She promptly sank in 20 feet of water. Barney says that the Port Authority sent the tug on its own and, therefore, was responsible for the calamity. The Port Authority says the tug was sent in response to an SOS from Barney."
Newscopy: "AT ANY RATE, the Capitol City is no more. She's just an untidy heap of lumber on the shore of the channel, where the Sherman Crane Service Co. of Oakland has been dismantling her and recovering her fragments from the channel bed with a huge 150-ton floating crane. But even in death she's still a problem. Asked what he was going to do with the lumber, Louis Sherman, a partner in the firm, sighed and said, "You tell me and I'll buy you dinner. "We could have just burned her, before the Smog Board passed the open burning rule, but now we have to haul the lumber to the dump-and there goes the profit. "But we started the job and we'll finish it, even if we lose money on it." Sherman's firm, whose main business is leasing cranes to other operators, entered the wrecking field a year ago and submitted an astonishingly low bid of $9477 to turn the Capitol City into history.
Written on back: "Aug 19 1958."