to the necessities of shipping or the rights of other
claimants. This custom led to many fights along the
city front, and numberless injunctions and complaints
in the courts.
Possession was generally regarded the best title, and to obtain or hold possession a resort to arms was of daily occurrence. In acquiring or maintaining title to the water-lots of Yerba Buena cove, the pile-driver was an important agent; superseding Irishmen, it fenced city blocks in the bay, and if dispossessed, fell back upon strategy to maintain possession. A certain block, for example, was wholly enclosed on three sides, and on the fourth the fence of piles was open only sufficient to admit a vessel. Just within this entrance were stationed two store ships, green water-dragons guarding possession, and keeping the pile-driver away from what it had with so much difficulty enclosed. Either the vessels must be carried by a storming party, and the aperture closed by the pile-driver, or they nmst be cut loose and turned adrift in the dead of the night. In this instance both devices were used and a long list of fights and law- suits followed.
Hiram Pearson and F. Lawson were, on the 21st of September, 1853, accused before the recorder of assault with deadly weapons while attempting to take possession of a water lot. Pearson was discharged and Lawson held for trial. The contending parties, it appears, had fought in boats, one of which, an old hulk called the Bethel, Lawson scuttled, intending to sink it on the lot and so maintain possession. Shots were freely fired on both sides, and attempts made to throw each other overboard ; but no lives were lost.
One Pinkham, living in April 1864 at the Potrero, thought to enrich his posterity by driving piles so as to enclose a number of overflowed lots in front of the glass-works. Others caught the infection; lines of piles were driven, and lots enclosed at interv^als, from Potrero point half way to Steamboat point, and again nearly to the- mouth of Mission creek. The desire
