A PARK ON THE RHINE

Home is the sailor, home from the sea , and the hunter home from the hill

--Robert Louis Stevenson, “Requiem”

These lines are inscribed on the Mariner’s Memorial at Rhine Wharf Park that is dedicated to all the seamen who left Newport Harbor and failed to return home.

The Rhine channel separates Lido Peninsula from Balboa. And it is here, at Rhine Wharf Park, surrounded by the bustle of the beach community, that it is possible to quietly come face to face with Orange County’s nautical past.

Created in 1975 by the city of Newport Beach, the park is the city’s only remaining site for commercial fishermen to unload their boats. But it’s more than just an intermediate stop on the catch-of-the-day’s last journey.

At the end of the channel, a cantilevered boardwalk hangs over the water. The 10 boat slips are a short-term parking lot for people making a seaborne visit. Sunken pilings serve overnight moorings.

Behind the boardwalk, backing up to Lido Park Drive, is a concrete bulkhead commonly known to locals as the “seawall.” The Mariner’s Memorial stands on top of the bulkhead while nearby, commercial fishermen and recreational sailors alike take on supplies and make repairs to their vessels before heading out the channel, past Lido and Balboa islands and finally out to sea.

The Rhine channel has a long lifeline. Although the upper bay was formed by river flow during the Pleistocene Epoch, the lower bay enjoys a more current history. In 1825, the Santa Ana River overflowed its banks, depositing a sand spit stretching across the mouth of the bay and creating the lagoon known today as Newport Bay. It wasn’t until 1919, when further dredging deepened the harbor, that the commercial fishing industry took Rhine channel as its home port. And as the fishermen unloaded their catch, the canneries began to appear.

One of the largest such facilities was the Newport Cannery. Its 80-year history began as a mackerel canning plant. But as mackerel were depleted from the Orange County coastline, the cannery turned to making fish fertilizer until 1921, when it closed for several years. Western Canners Co. took over the location in the 1930s.

Western Canners held on as a major Southern California cannery until 1966, when the pulleys and packing line clattered to a final halt. The warehouse did not reopen again until Robert Unger, a former Costa Mesa city manager, purchased the half-acre of land plus dock and buildings for about $425,000. Unger subsequently sold the cannery and its surroundings to Bill Hamilton in 1972. Hamilton renovated the building and in 1973 opened the Cannery, now a Newport Beach landmark restaurant.

Across the Rhine, another imposing waterfront landmark floats regally. The tall ship Resolution can be chartered for parties and weddings at sea. She is shipshape from bow to stern, skull and crossbones waving high above the other nearby masts and lending the small harbor an aura of piracy and swashbuckling.

Fronting the tall ship, Delaney’s Sea Shanty sits on the original site of Davey’s Locker (a charter and party boat business now located at the Balboa Fun Zone). In a small courtyard outside the restaurant, umbrella-covered benches provide a shady waterfront spot for foot-weary sojourners to rest while watching artists’ brushes on canvas capture the essence of this quiet seaside village. As public access to prime waterfront property continues to dwindle, vestiges such as Rhine Wharf Park help Orange County touch its nautical history.