On an early Tuesday morning in August on Lovers Point in Pacific Grove, Dennis Tarmina and volunteers are busy putting another coat of paint on the iconic white swan boat, the Margruss, a three-quarter replica of the original glass-bottomed boats that sailed in the cove beginning in the early 1890s. They had already spent much of July doing restoration work to rescue the rotting boat.
“The swan heads were mush inside,” Tarmina says.
Decades ago, the two heads adorned the original red-and-white boats that took tourists out into the cove off Lovers Point to view the sealife below in what is now the Pacific Grove Marine Gardens State Marine Conservation Area. The boats were operational for more than 80 years until the mid-1970s.
“A trip in the glass bottom boat will take you into a Marine Fairyland of fantastic shapes, a wealth of color and undreamed of strange creatures of the plant and animal world,” a postcard from the 1950s promoting the concession declares.
According to the Monterey Boat Heritage website, local realtor William Smith, who had rowed the boats for guests back in 1963, purchased the last two remaining glass-bottom boats in 1986 before they could be sent off to Oregon to decorate a restaurant. He donated one of the boats in 1996 to the Friends of the Heritage Society of Pacific Grove, but it was deemed too fragile to be saved.
The two wooden swan heads were saved and restored. Master boatbuilder Frank Siino of Monterey Bay Boatworks designed the 20-foot steel replica boat, without a glass bottom, which was fabricated by a local welder. It was christened the Margruss in 1997, combining the names of Margaret and Russell Sprague, owners of the boat business starting in 1948, taking over for Russell’s father, Nathaniel Roscoe “Dad” Sprague. The elder Sprague owned and operated a small fleet of the boats for more than 50 years.
The Margruss reportedly had only one trip the day it was christened, with dignitaries there for the event taking turns rowing or riding in the boat. With that it was hoisted out of the water and placed on a rolling platform and transported to the Pacific Grove Public Works Corporation Yard on Sunset Drive. It then sat for over 10 years as city officials and members of the Heritage Society’s board of directors struggled to agree on where to display it. The board turned to other projects and the Margruss remained hidden.
Around 2006, Tarmina and his late wife Marsha discovered the boat in the back of the corporation yard rusting away. Wanting to see the boat finally on display, the two– both members of the Heritage Society– asked the board to take up the challenge once again.
To raise money for its placement, Society members placed the boat on a trailer and entered it into the annual Good Old Days Parade in 2007 with a sign asking for donations. The boat was taken back to the corporation yard and Tarmina and another volunteer, Steve Honegger, went to work on preparing the boat. A site was finally chosen along the Rec Trail above Lovers Point Beach and it was unveiled on July 26, 2008.
The current restoration project came about after Heritage Secretary Jean Anton mentioned she thought the swan boat sign was looking shabby.
Tarmina raised his hand: “‘I’ll take care of it,’” he recalls saying.
Once that project was completed, the new sign made the boat “look like hell,” he says. At first P.G. Public Works employees were going to give it a new coat of paint, but Tarmina says that after close inspection he realized it was a much bigger job.
Tarmina is part of what’s known as the “Lighthouse Crew,” a group of volunteers that spend every Tuesday from 8am-noon doing anything that needs to be done at the Point Pinos Lighthouse. He recruited a few members of the crew—Bob Bourk, Bob Gunn and Ken Hinshaw—to switch over to the swan boat every week until they completed the project. The refurbishment was completed on Aug. 7, so now it’s back to the lighthouse for the crew.
The Margruss in its new, crisp, red-and-white paint is looking sharp, a reminder of when Pacific Grove was home to a fleet of graceful, glass-bottomed boats revealing the natural wonders below.