By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
ILLUSTRATION FROM S.F. CALL
The Chispa had a checkered past.
The schooner Chispa was built in 1879 by Matthew Turner in San Francisco. The day after launching she took first prize in a San Francisco Yacht Club race and was known to be one of the fastest yachts in San Francisco Bay and offshore. The yacht was owned by Commodore I. Gutte and affiliated with the SFYC, which was based in Sausalito at that time.
Chispa participated in many regattas, including an outing to Pittsburg on July 4, 1885. Here are excerpts from a Sausalito News account of that sail:
“The San Francisco Yacht Club had a very enjoyable run up to Pittsburg Landing for their Independence Day cruise. The yachts started from Front street wharf at 3 o'clock Friday afternoon with the exception of the Chispa which left about half an hour later but overhauled most of the other boats coming in at Martinez but a few minutes behind the winners. All the boats were gaily decorated with Chinese lanterns on the night of the Fourth and seemed to vie with each other in the display of fireworks.”
However, in 1898 Chispa was the scene of a grisly — and controversial — murder. The September 25 San Francisco Call reported:
“Captain James Morse Brooks, the navigator of the Chispa, was murdered while asleep in his bunk aboard that vessel at about 1:30 o'clock this morning. Peter Nelson, a deckhand, claims that the crime was committed by the proverbial ‘two men, one tall and the other short,’ and that he himself escaped death only by leaping over the side and swimming for his life. The circumstances are so peculiar that the authorities believed themselves warranted in arresting Nelson on the suspicion that he was the assassin, and he is now confined in a cell in the San Rafael Jail.”
The Chispa was anchored about 200 yards off the San Francisco Yacht Club house. A game of cards had just ended and the players were all on the street at the time. When they heard shots offshore, a handful of concerned citizens and lawmen clambered into a couple of small boats to investigate.
According to the Call, “The Chispa was boarded by the party and a terrible sight was revealed. Captain Brooks lay on his right side in his bunk, with his right hand under his head. His head and face were covered with blood, flowing from two ghastly wounds. One was in the edge of the hair in the left temple and the other behind the left ear. Both had been inflicted with some sharp instrument. The bed clothing, the head of the bed, and every article close by was spattered with the dead man’s life fluid.
“That robbery had been the motive for the deed was shown by the fact that the pockets of all the clothing in the room were turned inside out, the drawers of the lockers drawn forth and the room in a topsy-turvy condition. On the floor was found a common Ice pick, covered with blood, a silver quarter and a dime and a small bone-handled penknife with the large blade open.”
The Call quoted deckhand Nelson’s account of the crime:
"I had been in town with the captain, and we had been drinking beer at Garcia & Payne's tamale cafe. The captain was under the Influence of liquor at the time and we came aboard and both went to bed. This was about 9:3 o’clock. I slept soundly until I heard something rattling and then heard the captain moan 'Pete, help: They are killing me.' I got out of bed and started for the stateroom where he slept. As the door opened a short, heavy man shouted: ‘Put a bullet in him and stop that groaning. Kill that — too,' meaning me. I ran back and climbed through the hatch on deck.
“By the light of the anchor lamp I saw another man, a tall, dark-appearing fellow. I jumped just as he shot at me and swam for my life. Two more shots were fired and the second hit me in the calf of the right leg. I called loudly for help and was picked up by the keeper of the Ramona. Captain Brooks and I never had any words and I have worked on the yacht only two weeks. He showed only a dollar while he was on shore and that was when he paid for the beer at Garcia & Payne's."
The paper then detailed four discrepancies in Nelson’s account. The shore party reached the Chispa about five minutes after the shots were fired, yet the lawmen “both assert that the body of the dead man was already icy cold, showing that he must have been killed some time before the commotion.” The lawmen doubted that Nelson’s wound was from a gunshot, deciding, “It could have been made with any sharp-pointed instrument, and the ice pick might have been used to inflict it.”
Nelson’s description of the tall man on deck was positive and exact in detail. But “when asked how he could make out so many things in the dim light and when he had rushed up and jumped overboard so quickly, he hesitated and became hazy” about some of his description.
Finally, the deckhand was picked up within two minutes from the time he jumped overboard, and yet none of those who came from the shore saw any boat leave the yacht. “The light was dim, but it appears to the authorities that they could have noticed that fact.”
Nelson was eventually arrested, and various papers carried stories of his detention and the ongoing investigation, but I could find no reports of a trial, so the mystery remains unsolved.