Maury Polse, Fisherman Wharf’s smallest tour boat operator, dies

Maury Polse, Fisherman Wharf’s smallest tour boat operator, dies

Maury Polse, who ran what was probably the smallest tour boat operation in the West and was a familiar figure at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack Feb. 28 at his home in Lafayette.

Mr. Polse was the executive in charge of Dixie Charters Inc., and also the captain, engineer and deckhand aboard the 32-foot fishing boat Dixie, the flagship of the firm.

The boat had been built 92 years ago at the long-gone Genoa Boat Works in the days when Fisherman’s Wharf was a major center of the Italian American fishing fleet.

Mr. Polse, who admired old boats and the bay in equal fashion, enjoyed telling how he bought the Dixie, sight unseen, only to discover that it had sunk to the bottom of a slough near the San Joaquin River.

Though friends said he was from a prosperous East Bay family, Mr. Polse seemed uninterested in conventional business.

[...] he concentrated on his boat operations and, in his spare time, was an accomplished guitarist, poet and storyteller.