Famed boxer had Mare Island, Vallejo ties
Thomas “Sailor Tom” Sharkey, an Irish immigrant who learned to box in the Navy, began his professional stateside boxing career in Vallejo in the mid-1890s and advanced to battle the era’s best heavyweights. He made a fortune with his fists, but died broke.
Sharkey, born in 1873, left his home in Dundalk, Ireland, at age 12 and had sailed all over the world on merchant ships by the time he left his teens. At 19, he enlisted in the Navy and began boxing in organized bouts aboard the USS Philadelphia. In 1893 through mid-1894, when his ship was based in Honolulu, he knocked out a dozen other boxers, including British Navy heavyweight champion Jack Gardner.
By August 1894 the Philadelphia was back on the West Coast, tied up at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Sharkey, touted as the Navy’s heavyweight champion, knocked out three more boxers at matches held that month in nearby Vallejo. Tim McGrath, a manager and trainer in San Francisco, heard about Sharkey’s exploits but doubted his boxing skills. He figured on making some easy money by arranging a fight with a better-trained heavyweight and betting against the sailor.
McGrath went to Vallejo and met with some of Sharkey’s shipmates — who told him they were willing to bet $25,000 without even knowing who Sharkey would fight. Impressed by the sailors’ confidence, he asked to see Sharkey. When barrel-chested “Sailor Tom” showed up McGrath realized his betting strategy was flawed. “I chased my fighter right back to San Francisco because I didn’t want him to be killed in a fight,” he said in a 1929 newspaper interview. Then McGrath, always on the lookout for promising talent, worked out a deal to manage Sharkey, whose Navy enlistment was coming to an end.
Following his first 1894 stateside fights in Vallejo, where he lived for a couple of post-Navy years at 319 York
St., Sharkey had 1895 bouts in Vallejo, Colma and San Francisco. They included a Colma fight against “Australian” Billy Smith, who claimed he was the area’s best heavyweight. Sharkey knocked him out in seven rounds. Also that year, he
KO’d “Sailor” Burke in the third round of a scheduled 10-round match in Vallejo’s old Pavilion hall, located at the northwest corner of Georgia and Sutter streets.
Sharkey’s standing among professional heavyweights rose sharply in 1896 with a ring victory in San Francisco over Joe Choynski, a formidable, well-regarded boxer. Later that year, Sharkey also fought Bob Fitzsimmons in San Francisco, winning on a controversial belowthe-belt foul call against Fitzsimmons by referee and pioneer gunman Wyatt Earp. Sharkey also had bouts that year against greats Jim Corbett and John L. Sullivan. He was on the road, with fights in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Denver — well on his way to a great boxing career.
“Sailor Tom,” whose motto was “Never give up the ship,” never won a title but battled the best in his years in the ring. He scored 37 knockouts in 54 fights and got knocked out only once, by Fitzsimmons in a 1900 bout in New York. Boxing historians have described him as
an early version of Rocky Marciano — an aggressive brawler, short, squat, powerful, rough, with great endurance and seemingly impervious to the hardest punches.
Sharkey’s biggest battle was an epic 25-round heavyweight title match against Jim Jeffries at Coney Island, N.Y., filmed under hot arc lights on Nov. 3, 1899. Jeffries, the reigning champion, was 6-foot-2, nearly 30 pounds heavier and had a longer reach but the 5-foot-8 Sharkey went the full distance. He lost the decision, leaving the ring after the hour-and-40-minute brawl with two cracked ribs, a cut-up face and a badly swollen left ear — but still on his feet. Jeffries often referred to Sharkey as his toughest opponent.
After ending his professional boxing career in 1904, Sharkey opened a saloon in New York that was one of the city’s showplaces. He also invested in real estate, owned a string of racehorses and got involved in an oil company in Louisiana. When he retired he had a $500,000 fortune, which would be worth about $14 million in today’s dollars. But by 1916 his investments had failed badly and he was declared bankrupt in federal court, San Francisco.
In the mid-1920s Sharkey and Jeffries toured the country, giving boxing exhibitions in vaudeville shows. Sharkey also got a few character roles in Hollywood movies, worked as a carnival strongman and hired on at various California race tracks. During World War II, he had a job as a civilian guard in San Francisco. During many of his post-boxing years, he lived in San Francisco and often visited friends in Vallejo.
Suffering from heart problems, Sharkey was in and out of the San Francisco City and County Hospital 10 times in 1952 and 1953. Other fighters, promoters, old-time reporters and followers chipped in to pay his expenses.
Sharkey, 79, died in his sleep at the hospital on April 17, 1953 — six weeks after his most famous foe, Jim Jeffries, had died. Author Thomas Myler, in his 2017 book, New York Fight Nights, said that the ailing Sharkey, when told that Jeffries had passed away, remarked, “It took a long time but I finally beat the bugger in the end.” Many more details of Sharkey’s life are included in a 2010 book, I Fought them All, by distant relative Moira Sharkey and her husband Greg Lewis.
Sharkey was buried with full military honors in Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. A Navy color guard gave “Sailor Tom” a final three-volley salute at the gravesite. He was elected to the Ring Boxing Hall of Fame in 1959 and to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2003.
— Vallejo and other Solano County communities are treasure troves of early-day California history.
The “Solano Chronicles” column, running every other Sunday, highlights various aspects of that history. My source references are available upon request. If you have local stories or photos to share, email me at genoans@hotmail.com. You can also send any material care of the Times-Herald, 420 Virginia St.; or the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, 734 Marin St., Vallejo 94590.