Relevant History welcomes Western historical author Steve Bartholomew. Steve grew up in San Francisco but now resides in Lakeport, a more remote town in Northern California. He has completed seven novels: five published and two more in the pipeline. He’s mainly fascinated by the California Gold Rush and by the numerous strange and wonderful characters who lived in the West during the second half of the 19th Century. This drama inspired his third novel, Gold, A Tale of the California Gold Rush. His next novel, The Imaginary Emperor, set in antebellum San Francisco, is now available. For more information, check his blog.
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On January 24, 1848, an event occurred in the wilderness of Northern California which was to change the Nation and the World. James W. Marshall, working for John Sutter, was surveying a site for a new sawmill. He discovered a few flakes of gold in the American River. Sutter and Marshall both agreed to keep it a secret, but the news got out.
As a result, the village of Yerba Buena, population about 800, was to swell in size to over 30,000 in less than two years. It also changed its name to San Francisco. People swarmed in from every country on Earth. In the 1850’s California was probably the most multicultural place on the planet.
Contrary to Hollywood myth, most of these people did not arrive by way of wagon train. Some did, but thousands more came by sea. On the East Coast, businesses, banks and government offices had to close their doors because the employees were headed for the Gold Rush. The fastest and most comfortable way to get there was by ship. Old sailing ships were dragged out of the wrecking yards and refitted to meet the demand. Every vessel that could float was booked up. Those who could afford it bought tickets for the new sidewheel steam ships.
Imagine yourself living in a New York tenement in 1850. You are working twelve hours a day for barely enough to live on; the place is freezing cold at night and sweltering in the day, with no running water. Maybe five or six others share your flat. You have no future except more of the same. Then, suddenly, you’re offered a way out. You can travel to a different world if you can scrape up the fare, about $200. You can go to a land where gold pops out of the ground, the weather is always warm and sunny, and there’s plenty of food and room.
There’s only one catch: to get there you have to trust a new, untested technology. You will be out of contact with humanity for months at a time, and you’ll have to live on bully beef or salt pork and hardtack. There may be storms, and it’s always possible the ship may blow up and sink. This was the choice faced by eager passengers electing to go by steerage in a steamship. There was no lack of applicants.
The typical sidewheeler was about two hundred feet long and thirty feet or so wide in the beam. She was the largest wooden-hulled ship ever built. Her engine had only one cylinder and a tall smoke stack that often drifted black cinders onto the passenger and crew. The engine was noisy and might burn as much as 60 tons of coal per day. There were masts and sails in case the engine broke down or ran out of fuel. The ship could carry up to a thousand passengers.
The main advantage of the steamer was that she could get you to California fast. New York to San Francisco in as little as four months! The steamers were not actually faster than sailing ships, but they had a shorter way to go. The canvasbacks had to stand out a hundred miles or so from the coast to avoid being blown ashore. Steamships, on the other hand, stayed as close to shore as possible in order to shorten the journey and save coal. Moreover, steamships could use the Straits of Magellan route, which was deemed too risky for sails, but saved several hundred miles. There were also the Pacific winds, which tend to blow north to south. This forced sailing ships to tack far to the northwest before coming about and sailing downwind to California. The longest voyage on record was a ship that left New York in January and didn’t arrive in San Francisco until November.
Then again, you had a choice. In theory you could make the journey shorter by landing at Panama. Take a mule train to the Pacific side, then wait for another ship to take you north. The only problem with this idea was that during the Rush, you might have to wait on shore for three or four months for that other ship. There was also the risk of “Panama Fever” and other diseases.
Somehow, thousands of our ancestors endured the voyage. Few of them became rich, but some of them became productive citizens of a new land. They may not have found the gold they sought, but they learned to live together and create a new society under the golden light of the Pacific sun.
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A big thanks to Steve Bartholomew. He’ll give away two print copies of Gold to people who contribute comments on my blog this week. I’ll choose winners from among those who comment by Saturday at 6 p.m. ET.
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The gold rush had to be one of the most exciting times in American history. California was incredibly hard to get to and still people flooded in. Thank you for reminding us all of such an important event.
Hi John, and thanks for stopping by. Amazing, the challenges we undertake, eh?
I suspect folks had to be a little strange to want to get to California in the first place. Once they got here they were likely to become stranger still. Thus we have a long tradition of eccentricity, a flavor I try to capture in my books.
BTW, San Francisco was the only real city in California up until the 1920’s. I recently finished reading a book by Gertrude Atherton, titled “California, an Intimate History,” published in 1914. She refers to Los Angeles as a “pest hole.” Some people up north might still contend she got that right. 😉
Despite the danger and difficulties of the sea route, read Ferol Egan’s The El Dorado Trail about the various land routes across Mexico and you’ll understand why the steamers were a better choice for most goldseekers.
Gold sounds like a book I’ll want to read.
I was surprised and intrigued to learn that Yerba Buena existed prior to the start of the gold rush. The version of events I’d heard was that a Mormon preacher by the name of Brannan had started a tent city of his followers who sold goods and services to gold prospectors, and that eventually became Yerba Buena and then San Francisco.
In trying to track down this story, I’ve found that Google has yielded almost no results. I think Brannan would be a fine character for a future novel by Bartholomew, as he was a very controversial, wacky, hard-drinking individual who was briefly kicked out of the Mormon church for preaching unorthodox beliefs about women’s sexual freedom.
Steve, I suspect that more than a few people currently living in LA would agree with Atherton.
Hi John, nice to see you here again. I can well believe that a steamer was the preferred route. Lots more varmints to contend with on land.
Welcome, Brendan. Thanks for that great story about Brannan. You cannot blame the guy for trying.
Re Sam Brannan: Yerba Buena was founded by Spanish missionaries (Mission Dolores), so it was here when Brannan arrived. He was sent by the Mormons to set up a colony, but decided the place was too rowdy. Instead, he appropriated the Mormon funds to his own purpose and started a hardware business. He’s often given credit (or blame) for starting the gold rush. After hearing about Marshall’s discovery he marched down Market Street holding up a gold nugget and proclaiming, “Gold! From the American River!” Later he became one of the founding fathers of San Francisco as well has head of the first Committee of Vigilance. By then he had given up on Mormonism. Today he has a street named after him, but probably most people who live there don’t know who he was.
I love this era and the effects of the lure of gold on individual’s lives. Fascinating stuff.
Welcome, Lorraine. I agree. Fascinating how people’s personalities and life goals change over gold. And it doesn’t have to be gold that’s the catalyst.
Read a book on this era, centered on Levi Strauss, but unfortunately cannot recall title.
Most books seem to concentrate on earthquake era or WWII (when my parents lived in SF).
Steve Bartholomew’s books Gold and Emperor Norton should help fill in the gap.
Sounds reasonable. Thanks for stopping by, Liz.
Posted on behalf of M. E. Kemp, who has a cranky computer:
Steve, I really enjoyed your post because my “Uncle Horatio” (I suspect he was my great-grandmother’s uncle) left Oxford MA to sail around So. America by clipper ship to San Francisco to pan for gold. He got there carrying his carpet bag, checked into a hotel, wandered down to the docks, found out there was a ship leaving for Boston that moment, hopped on the ship and sailed back to Boston, leaving his carpet bag behind. Uncle Horatio was also one of the founders of the Unitarian Universalist Church.
Marilyn aka: M.E . Kemp; new book to come: DEATH OF A CAPE COD CAVALIER
Uncle Horatio must not have liked the looks of San Francisco. Or maybe it was the smell? It was some time before they had organized garbage collection service. Clipper ships were another means of transport, in some ways more comfortable than steamers. The Flying Cloud once set a record of 90 days from New York to California, around the Horn, which wasn’t broken until the 20th Century.