Going for the Gold
Traveling by Sea to the California Gold Fields
When President
James K. Polk stood before Congress in December 1848 and announced to the world
that gold had been discovered in California’s foothills, holding a tea caddy with
more than 230 ounces of it as proof, he kicked off, arguably, the most
legendary voluntary migration of people the world has ever known. Adventurous
men from around the globe – Mexicans, Europeans, South Americans, Australians
and hardy Yankees – streamed to California to claim their share of the precious
metal. Most of them traveled to the gold fields by sea.
For the
Gold-Rushing Argonauts of 1849, California was a long way from anywhere. Adverse
winds and violent storms could delay them for weeks if they sailed around Cape
Horn. Overland travel could take longer and had its own perils.
There was one
other way to get to the gold fields: travel by steamship down the Atlantic
Coast to Panama and a hike across the Isthmus to catch a second steamer to the
diggings. In my new novel, Their Golden
Dreams (available May 1 on Kindle and Amazon.com) I trace the progress of
two daring young women as they travel the Panama route.
Almost by
accident, that route became a thriving enterprise for a not-so-well-known
American entrepreneur by the name of William Henry Aspinwall.
At the age of 25,
William Aspinwall emerged as leader of family trading company, Howland and
Aspinwall in 1834. With him at the helm, the company grew. Its ships, with the
blue and white company flag at their mastheads, sailed to London, Liverpool,
the Mediterranean, Caribbean, South America, and across the Pacific to Canton,
China. At that time, sailing vessels were virtual general stores, sailing from
port to port, trading one cargo for another and moving on to the next port on
voyages that might take two or three years before returning home.
But maritime times
were changing, and Aspinwall saw the future. It was speed that counted, not the
port to port meanderings of heavy laden ships, but speed from home to a foreign
port loaded with cargo and a speedy return home with another cargo. In 1843,
Aspinwall approved a radical design from Naval architect, John Willis
Griffiths, for the first clipper ship, Rainbow,
a longer, leaner, taller-masted ship than most conventional vessels. The clipper ship returned double her
cost on her maiden voyage.
In the mid 1840s
national affairs intervened to change the course of William Aspinwall’s career,
and bring California and Oregon more firmly under U.S. control. In 1847, before
the end of the Mexican War, Congress granted two U.S. mail subsidies: one down
the East Coast to Panama and the other from Panama’s Pacific coast to Oregon
with a stop in San Francisco because it strengthened our hold on Oregon.
Aspinwall bought
the contract for the Panama to Oregon, but he wasn’t sure if it was a good
investment or not because there were few profit port calls along the way.
He ordered three
small steamships built: two, “California
and Panama, from the William Webb
shipyard and a third, Oregon from The
Smith and Dimon yards. They were side lever paddlewheel ships of about 300 tons
and 200 feet in length, each costing about $200,000.
The
California was the first to leave New
York to take up station in Panama. While she had a passenger capacity of 60 in
cabins, she left on October 6,
1848, before Polk’s startling
announcement, with just seven passengers on board.
California discovered it had a cracked crosshead, a mechanism used
in large
reciprocating engines to eliminate
sideways pressure on the piston, the first day out. Each day thereafter,
captain and crew identified other problems in the brand new ship. But the ship
traversed the Straits of Magellan, around Cape Horn, and stopped in Valparaiso,
Chile, and Callao, Peru, before heading to Panama.
California was unaware of what awaited her and her crew in Panama
City.
On December 30,
the New York newspapers had reported that the offices of Howland and Aspinwall
had been overrun the entire month with Argonauts clamoring for passage. When California arrived in Panama she was met
by total chaos. The Rush was on. Accounts vary, but there were at least 1,500
people waiting to board the steamer for San Francisco.
When California finally left Panama on
January 31, 1849 she carried about 375 passengers lucky to have won a lottery
for space on the steamer, leaving behind a large gathering of angry Americans
waiting for the next ship. The Oregon
heaved anchor in New York on December 22, 1848 and the Panama followed on February 17, 1849, but it would be over a year
before the backlog of gold seekers waiting in Panama would all find passage to
San Francisco.
When California had stopped in Callao on the
way north, she loaded 17 Peruvian miners bound for San Francisco. Arriving in
Panama, Americans anxious to get to the diggings wanted them thrown off the
ship. An U.S. Army general heading for Oregon thought the Peruvians should be
dragged off the California. He declared
in the Panama newspaper, “…nothing can be more unjust and immeasurable than for
persons not citizens of the United States… to dig the gold found in
California…” By order of the U.S. Consul in Panama, who happened to be a
Pacific Mail Steamship Company agent, the Peruvian miners were allowed to
continue to San Francisco.
The mob of
would-be miners waiting for transportation to San Francisco had made the
journey across the Isthmus of Panama from Charges, a city described as “a
collection of hovels; muddy, hot, odorous, and hard pressed by the tropical
jungle.” Discharged from the Atlantic steamers at Charges, the Argonauts made
their way by canoe, mule and on foot toward Panama City on the Pacific coast.
The first leg of
the journey was up the Charges River to Gorgona, where travelers camped to the
“screeching of parrots, the clattering of woodcocks, the gibberish of monkeys
& the howling of tigers.”
Jessie Benton
Frèmont was one of the early travelers to cross the Isthmus. She was on her way
to meet Pathfinder husband, John Charles Frèmont, in San Francisco, from whom
she’d been separated for over six months. Although a woman of privilege, due to
her husband and father, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, Jessie endured many of the
hardships of the journey. (To learn more about this amazing young woman read
John and Jessie Frèmont: The Couple Who Won
the West and Lost Everything Else available on Kindle click
click here.
In a romantic mood
Jessie described the scene, “…from a mountain top you look down into an
undulating sea of magnificent unknown blooms, sending up clouds of perfume into
the freshness of the morning; and thus from the last of the peaks we saw, as
Balboa had seen before us, the Pacific at our feet.”
Ahead lay Panama City,
a city of narrow streets, balconied homes and ornate cathedrals and churches,
crowded with gold seekers waiting for a ship. It was also a breeding ground for
any number of diseases. Cholera and malaria were rampant.
Jessie Frèmont contracted
“Brain Fever” in Panama City. American and Spanish doctors debated her
treatment. “The two physicians, with their contradictory ideas and their
inability to understand each other, only added to the confusion of my mind, and
became part of my delirium,” she wrote. Because she was a woman traveling with
a young child, nationally known and recovering from her sickness, she was one
of the lucky ones who were granted passage on the next available ship.
When the steamship
arrived in Monterey, California, she was out of fuel and had had to burn deck
fittings and furniture during the last part of the voyage to make steam. It was
not a tranquil voyage. Captain Forbes made numerous notes in his journal on the
way, including brief comments like, “We have many on board of very high standing…
but we also have many of the scum of creation, black legs, gamblers, thieves,
runners and drunkards… Everyone looks out for himself at table & the grab
game is practiced at every meal…”
Finally, California limped into San Francisco Bay
San Francisco on February 23, 1849 to a booming 21-gun salute from the six
ships of the Pacific Naval Squadron anchored there.
Over the years,
the Pacific Mail Steamship Company carried thousands of men and women to San
Francisco, creating a thriving new business for William Aspinwall, but he almost
immediately saw that transportation from the Atlantic port of Chargas, across
the Isthmus to Panama City had to be improved. The new location of the Atlantic
jumping off place for the railroad he was building was called Manzanillo
Island, “a 650-acre, coral-ringed, morass of seaweed, mangroves, and flotsam
infested by alligators, snakes, mosquitoes and sand flies.” At high tide it was
underwater. The roadbed was built over swamps and quick sand and mud, progressing
westward at a snail’s pace.
At the same time, competition,
described as “bitter and ruthless”, was developing. The most troublesome
competitor was Cornelius Vanderbilt, who announced plans to build a competing
route across Nicaragua. By 1851 he had ships on both coasts and an easier
crossing via the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua. The total time from New
York to San Francisco was shortened on Vanderbilt’s route, putting Aspinwall’s
Panama hope in great jeopardy.
But luck was on his
side. In December 1851, two of the U.S. Steamship Company’s steamers, with over
a thousand passengers, arrive at Charges in a terrible storm. Several
passengers were drowned trying to disembark. Remaining passengers heard the
steam whistle of a Pacific Railroad engine and demanded to be taken to
Manzanillo Island. There, they demanded transportation across the Isthmus. The
new railroad, still abuilding, had no passenger cars and only eight miles of
track, but the local manager agreed to take the travelers for fifty cents a
head and $3 per pound for their baggage. In all, 1,100 people paid up and
clambered about the railroad’s flatcars. When news reached New York, the U.S. Line
shifted its Atlantic port from Charges to Manzanillo Island, soon to be renamed
Aspinwall, and the railroad’s future was assured.
The first train to
run from Atlantic to Pacific across the Isthmus of Panama made the trip on
Sunday, January 28, 1855, and from that time on contributed large profits to
William Aspinwall’s fortune. But he didn’t attend the opening ceremonies that
Sunday. He arrived a few days later to inspect the railroad and board a new,
larger steamship, John L. Stephens,
for San Francisco. It was the first and only time Aspinwall ever visited Panama
or California.
Wearing a blue uniform with gold-plated epaulets donated
by the officers at the Presidio, and a beaver hat with a rooster feather in it
and a rosette, Emperor Norton was frequently seen walking the streets of San
Francisco with two loyal dogs “Bummer” and “Lazarus”, inspecting the public works. For two decades the
people of San Francisco loved his eccentricities. He often dined for free in some of the city’s best
restaurants whose proprietors welcomed him for the publicity value. Subsequently he also took the title “Protector of Mexico”. In the
census of 1870 he was said to be 50-years-old, residing at 624 Commercial
Street. His occupation was listed as “Emporer”. It was also noted he was
insane. But was he?
