The Ark Sausalito: the Charles Van Damme Ferry
< /p>
Modern attention may be drawn to Sausalito’s two most famous (or notorious) houseboats, the Taj Mahal and Forbes Island. But it so happens that the two most famous boats in 20th Century Sausalito history gained their fame as retired ferries: the S.S. Vallejo and the S.S. Charles Van Damme.
The Van Damme had a long and busy life before it ever reached Sausalito. It was built in 1915 for the Richmond-San Rafael ferry route, and named for the ferry company’s president. In 1941 the U.S. Navy acquired the ferry to serve its massive Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo during World War II. In 1944 the Van Damme was sold off by the Navy (and it’s unclear why this was done with the war still raging in the Pacific and in Europe), with the high bidder being the city of Martinez. There it was used on the Benicia to Martinez route across the Carquinez Strait. By the late 1950s it was docked at Jack London Square in Oakland and held a floating Chinese restaurant named Canton (see image at left).
A decade later the Van Damme had arrived in Sausalito. A club and performance venue in the 1960’s, the Ark was the popular name for the old ferry boat The Van Damme, moored (and eventually grounded) at Gate 6 in Sausalito. Apart from its musical prominence, it was also a psychedelic-era cultural center for the entire region. The Santana Blues Band (before their name was shortened to Santana) played their first-ever gig there on March 1, 1967, and returned again in 1968.
Local bands like the Redlegs (shown in the video above, and still playing locally with different lineups as The Hippie Voices, The Gaters and Catfish & Tate) played benefits there in an unsuccessful effort to save the antique boat. Old handbills from the Ark can sell for hundreds of dollars each on the collectors market.
You can see old photos of the Ark and read about the effort to preserve its paddle wheel and smokestack (all that’s left after the old ship was declared unsafe and demolished) at the Charles Van Damme Ferry website.