Hiram Spurling learned rigging in the Nova Scotia shipyards and sailed on coasting schooners before he came round to California. In 1862 he came north to build a lumber chute for the new mill of Hartwell Timber Co., and he ran the landing under it until he died. He married Esther Doane in San Francisco in 1869 and brought her to a house above the harbor.
For five generations the family has made its living off the same water in three ways: loading lumber, then fishing and building boats, and now running the harbor. The fishing years were the thin ones. Salmon were already scarcer when Gus Spurling bought his first boat, and by his grandson Wayne's time crab paid most of the bills.
