(Photo Copyright 1998 by Joel GAzis-SAx. Used with permission)
"Our direction from the pier to the island was about northwest. We circled the island and came alongside a pier on the southeast side. They marched us out of our cabins, still in leg irons and handcuffs, and into a black truck with solid sides and grilled back doors. It looked like a police patrol wagon. I'm a poor judge at guessing distances. Maybe it is 125 or 150 yards in a straight line from the pier to the top of The Rock where the prison buildings are, but the road zig-zagged back and forth and coiled around, making it much longer."
A.W. Davis AZ-311
The Rock was not self-sufficient. Almost everything had to be brought from somewhere else.
Food came from the mainland. A special barge brought fresh water for drinking and mixing
concrete. Oil for the generators and gas for the trucks came on another barge.
The Warden Johnston carried passengers and mail from the Fort Mason pier. Bricks were
fired from Angel Island clay. Even the soil in which the island's now fabled gardens grow had
to be brought from that neighboring island. Army engineers determined that there were only two
or three places where a ship could land. They chose a spot near the eastern tip of the isle to
build their dock.
This vital area required protection, so in 1865 the Army set its convicts to the task of levelling the ground and building the foundation for a "Bomb-Proof Barracks". The plan was to build a two-story structure with arched vaults known as casemates where the men slept and ate next to their guns, much as they would have at sea. The 1864 destruction of South Carolina's Fort Pulaski by rifled cannon fire had military strategists questioning the value of brick fortifications and, in 1867, work on the Bomb-Proof Barracks stopped before the second floor was completed. The garrison moved into the first story. A wooden barracks was built atop the casemate. In 1905, the Army tore this down and erected a new four company barracks in its place. The new structure was called Building 64.
Cunning planners cast concrete blocks on the dock
and then hoisted them in place atop the casemates. Many visitors have
been fooled into thinking that the upper levels of Building 64 are made
out of stone, so carefully was each block set in place and tipped with
concrete.
When the Bureau of Prisons took over the island in 1934, it turned the barracks into apartments for the guards and their families.
A catwalk connected the lowest tier of the apartments with the new Dock Tower. Convicts who worked on the docks were carefully watched. Children who lived in the building sometimes dropped balls or balsa airplanes from the upper stories. They would then lower a basket, waiting for a prisoner to retrieve the lost toy and get a guard's permission to return it to the owners. The families also enjoyed front row seating as prison barges bearing public enemies like Al Capone and Alvin Karpis arrived. They crowded the windows and gaped as J. Edgar Hoover's prizes in the war on crime were marched into panel trucks for the ride up the hill.
Though the Army left in 1934, it still relied on the Rock's prisoners for cleaning its laundry. During the Second World War, Jack Giles got himself a job working on the dock, a choice assignment. He assembled a technical sargeant's uniform, a piece at a time. When his outfit was complete, he put it on under his prison overalls, then watched for a moment when he could strip and slip aboard one of the boats which ferried soldiers to and from neighboring posts. He got his chance, but made two miscalculations: First, the boat he chose was going to Angel Island, not the Presidio as he expected. Second, the Army counted the men on the boat. Giles thought he was a free man, but the ship's captain caught the discrepancy in the count and radioed word back to Alcatraz. Guard captain Phillip Bergen jumped in a fast launch which brought him to the Fort McDowell pier before Giles' boat landed. As Giles marched off the boat, his face fell as he saw Bergen waiting at the end of the gangplank for him. Despite his failure, some guards were of the opinion that his was the cleverest escape attempt from Alcatraz and even wished that he had made it. Giles spent a year in D-Block before he was given the worst job on the Rock: running the incinerator.
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