This story begins with my great great grandfather, William Edevine Filmer. Born to a wealthy family in 1843 in Newton Abbot, England, he enlisted in the British Royal Navy at the age of 16. When his family lost their fortune in the flooding of Cornish copper mines in 1860, William E lost his Royal Navy commission. He joined the merchant service, commanding cargo ships that sailed between Great Britain and New York.
In 1896 William E was entrusted by the Mitsui Company of Japan with sailing their new steamer, the Fujisan Maru, from England to Japan. In Japan, William E and his son, William CTS, were both hired by Toyo Kisen Kaisha (TKK), a Japanese shipping company based in Yokohama. TKK had just had three new ships also built in Great Britain: the Nippon Maru, the America Maru and the Hong Kong Maru. William E took command of the Hongkong Maru, sailing between Japan and China. William CTS was a rotating officer on all three ships.
William Cooper-Temple Schmidt Filmer was born in 1873 and, like his father, went to sea at age 16. He sailed around Cape Horn nineteen times. Both harrowing and dangerous, he witnessed countless young men fall off rigging to their death in the violent seas. He would often repeat a familiar sailors’ mantra: “Anyone who goes to sea for pleasure would go to hell for pastime.” During his travels, William CTS fell in love with San Francisco and made it his home, eventually becoming an American citizen.
When war between Russia and Japan broke out in 1902, the TKK fleet was taken over by the Japanese government for military purposes. William E took command of a TKK ship which transported troops and became a hospital ship. William CTS was an officer under his father’s command. William E received the Imperial Sixth Order of the Rising Sun, a national decoration awarded for meritorious military service. After the war, the three TKK sister ships began transporting passengers and cargo between Hong Kong and San Francisco with stops in Manila, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohama and Honolulu. William E took command of the Nippon Maru. Though he once ran his ship into a dock in Honolulu, he was very proud of the fact that none of the ships under his command ever met with disaster.
In 1906, while first officer on the Hongkong Maru, William CTS met his future wife Amelia Brand from Toledo, Ohio. When they sailed into the San Francisco harbor, they were met with the devastating aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fires[1], prompting William CTS to propose. He and Amelia married a year later and William CTS bought a Maybeck house[2] with a panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay on Parnassus Avenue (now part of the UCSF campus) so that, while he was at home, he could watch the ships coming and going. But Amelia, alone for six months at a time with a baby, felt isolated up on the hill. William CTS came home from a voyage only to find that Amelia had sold the Maybeck house and had moved the family into a two-unit building on Lincoln and 7th where it was flat and populated.
In 1908 TKK commissioned three new turbine-powered ships. William E would continue to captain the Nippon Maru until his retirement in 1911. TKK’s new passenger fleet included the Tenyo Maru, the Shinyo Maru, and the Chiyu Maru. In an odd twist of fate, the Nippon Maru staff and crew were transferred to the Shinyo Maru, whose command was taken over by William CTS.
William CTS retired from TKK in 1917 when he was appointed San Francisco’s Port Captain by Mayor James Rolph[3] (this position was taken over by the US Coast Guard in 1955). Rolph presented William CTS with a silver-plated gun that William CTS carried with him everywhere during his tenure as Port Captain. He and Rolph would become drinking buddies and could often be found hanging out at the Merchants Exchange Building[4]. When he wasn’t there, William CTS could be found in a pilot boat navigating ships through the notorious San Francisco fog[5].
In the 1930s William CTS and his family moved into a detached home on 28th between Lincoln and Irving. After his retirement as Port Captain, William CTS got up every morning, dressed in a three piece suit and drove to Ocean Beach[5A] to watch the ships come in using binoculars presented to him by the Emperor of Japan. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1945[6], neighbors reported William CTS’s connection with Japan to the FBI and he was arrested and detained. Soon after being released, the FBI returned to his house with cryptographers, and William CTS mapped out navigational hazards in the South China Sea.
William CTS died in 1949. The house on 28th Avenue would remain in the family home for another generation.
In 1916 the Chiyu Maru ran aground and sank under the command of Ernest Bent. In 1926 TKK was acquired by Nippon Yusen Kaisha Steamship Company (NYK). The Tenyo Maru was scrapped in 1933 and the Shinyo Maru three years later.
[1] 1906 Earthquake and Fires: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=2849
[2] Bernard Maybeck: story coming July 14th
[3] James “Sunny Jim” Rolph: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=5365
[4] Merchants Exchange Building: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4971
[5] Karl the Fog: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3950
[5A] Ocean Beach: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=5243[6] World War II: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4222
