You are standing near the end of Cowell’s Wharf, dating back to early 1850s. As the map indicates a number of Gold Rush store-ships were moored as floating warehouses as far inland as Battery and Sansome Streets. With buildings in short supply, the ability to store incoming cargo until the price went up made the warehouses immensely profitable. Of the permanently moored vessels shown on the map, research indicates that the Rhone, Philip Hone, William Gary, Palmyra, and LeBaron were left in place and covered by fill. In February of 1980, archaeological excavation revealed a ship to be buried, with her deck lying 18 feet directly beneath the sidewalk along Battery Street, between Filbert and the Italian Swiss Colony Building. This Gold Rush vessel, believed to be the store-ship William Gray, remains buried there and is one of the estimated forty Gold Rush ships still entombed under the city streets of San Francisco.