Colonel Richard B. Mason took his time filling out a carefully detailed report of his observations in the gold fields. He completing the report on August 17, 1848, and dispatched a courier, Lieutenant Lucien Loeser, on a roundabout route back to Washington with Mason's official report, along with a tea-caddy crammed with over 230 ounces of gold. On August 30, 1848, Loeser sailed from Monterey by schooner to Payta, Peru, where he caught a British steamer to Panama. After crossing the Isthmus, Loeser booked passage to Jamaica, and from there to New Orleans where news of the official confirmation of the gold discovery created much excitement. Loeser telegraphed his report to the War Department and resumed his journey to the capital.

President Polk received a copy of Mason's report from the War Department and promptly hailed it as justification for the none too popular war with Mexico and his manifest destiny policy.

In his dispatch, Mason mentioned that "There is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers than would pay the cost of the late war with Mexico a hundred times over."

Earlier reports of the gold discovery and a few samples had made their way east across the Plains and the Isthmus by August and had been looked upon by many as wild tales from the far west. That was about to change.

Mason's dispatch figured prominently in Polk's report to Congress on December 5, 1848. Two days later, Loeser arrived in Washington with the tea caddy crammed with gold that caused an immediate sensation. There it was for all to see, 230 ounces, 15 pennyweights and nine grains of gold purchased with civil funds by Mason to present as evidence of the golden harvest to the people back east. The official assay confirmed that it averaged 0.894 fine; high-grade gold. The gold was placed on display at the War Office where it was announced that some nuggets would be preserved, some coined, with the rest of the gold cast into medals "commemorative of the heroism and valor of our officers."

Loeser's tea caddy touched off the gold mania that soon swept across the nation much the same way as Brannan's vial of gold had electrified San Francisco. The gold fever spread in all directions and found the country ripe for new adventures as thousands of people began making frenzied plans to journey to the land of El Dorado.

The news of the gold discoveries came at an opportune time as the nation was on the rebound from the war with Mexico and a tremendous territorial expansion. Many of the recently released veterans were restless, finding readjustment to the humdrum life difficult, and longed for something different.

Newspapers jumped on the bandwagon parading one story after another about the richness of the gold fields, whipping up enthusiasm which carried them along as well. Many editors "shelved their books and papers to join foremost in the throng." Along with, according to California historian Bancroft, "the trader. . ., the toiling farmer, whose mortgage loomed above the growing family, the briefless lawyer, the starving student, the quack, the idler, the harlot, the gambler, the hen-pecked husband, the disgraced; with many earnest, enterprising, honest men and devoted women." Some thought the claims of gold to be wildly exaggerated, but they, too, went and hoped for modest success.

Gold fever swept up the Atlantic seaboard much like a tidal wave and soon engulfed New York City and all of New England. Sailing shipyards had been in the doldrums since the end of the Mexican War, when a large number of ships were released from service. Except for the old salts, many people had doubted the future of sailing ships. But steam ships that needed a steady supply of coal were not yet really suited for the run around Cape Horn.

The Atlantic shipyards now suddenly sprang back to life. Idle old ships in every little seaport along the coast were soon bought up by expeditionary "companies," and after hasty repairs, were shipping "up for California."

Fast sailing packet ships carried the word across the Atlantic to England and the European continent, that soon got caught up with the gold fever. France, Germany, and the Baltic countries were particularly hard hit and soon sent forth their gold hungry multitudes of eager young men to the land of Queen Califa.

Almost immediately, a number of shrewd New York and Boston merchants saw a likely market in California for a speculative cargo. Additional sailing notices were announced. A fair number of gold seekers booked passage on these public carriers as well. Many gold-seekers also signed on as crew and worked their way to California. Some drew pay and some did it for nothing, while others paid for the privilege.

New York City bustled with excitement. All along South Street, merchants scurried about securing cargo for the Cape Horn run. Boxes, barrels, and bales were piled high along the sidewalks, too much for the warehouses now, and conveyed by hundreds of drays to the awaiting ships that were soon to sail 'round the Horn to San Francisco.

Newspapers were filled with the exciting news of "California" always in the headlines with bold glaring letters. Columns advertised the formation of expeditionary companies that were hastily forming everywhere.

Some companies chose to travel by wagon train overland across the plains from Missouri. Others, to travel by ship to Vera Cruz, Mexico, or Panama to make their way across the Isthmus and resume the journey by ship to the gold fields. Still other companies to sail around the Horn. All manner of goods needed for such expeditions were hawked in the columns as well. From the newspapers of the day, the following:

Six-barrelled revolvers; Colt's and Allen's Revolving pistols; Belts, Hatchets, Axes and Bowie Knives; Money Belts made exclusively for gold. . . .

One of the more far-fetched offerings mentioned was:

A Yankee down East has invented "California Grease" for Gold Hunting.

The operator is to grease himself well, lay down on the top of a hill, and

then roll down to the bottom. The gold, and nothing else, will stick to

him. Price, Ten dollars per box.

Also offered up to the prudent would be gold miner, were all sorts of amazing mining machinery. Contraptions of gears, belts, chains, and cranks that were powered by water, steam, or by hand and said to be indispensable for the digging, dredging, and washing of gold. Mostly, they were complicated contraptions of dubious worth that would be ultimately discarded long before they ever made it to the diggings.

Great interest arose in the earlier writings of Richard Dana's Two Years Before the Mast and the topographical reports of John C. Frémont.

A large variety of "diggers' handbooks" appeared on the literary scene, filled with dubious hints of how to get to the gold fields, and how to look for and find gold once you've arrived; descriptions of the countryside, maps and illustrations. Some contained useful information. Many others were written by plagiarizing hacks who stole from the works of Mason, Frémont, Dana, and others. Often including newspaper accounts with a popular song or two, along with a poem thrown in, thus making up a hodgepodge affair selling for two bits, or one bit minus the map. They bore such long titles as:

The Emigrant's Guide to the Gold Mines: Three Weeks in the Gold Mines, or Adventures with the Gold Diggers of California, in August, 1848, together with advise to Emigrants, with Full Instructions upon the Best Methods of Getting There, Living, Expenses, etc., etc., and a Complete Description of the Country, with a Map and Illustrations.

Other guidebooks concentrated on specific routes to the gold fields, of which there were many. Some concentrated on the technicalities of gold mining. Foreign versions of these guide books showed up all over Europe.

Sailing dates of vessels "Bound for California" filled the newspapers. Posters appeared on every New England fence and wall, always with a picture of a gallant sailing ship promising a safe passage around the Horn to San Francisco. For the great majority of New Englanders, this was by far the only way to go. They were not afraid of the sea. Yankee ships had made their way 'round the Horn since the closing days of the Revolution in their quest for the China trade and the Northwest fur trade, along with the more recent trade in California hides. The journey 'round the Horn was also the preferred route of the Europeans.

Rich and aristocratic New England "companies" were formed as shares were sold in the venture. They bought their own vessels and held them in common. A peculiar sort of democracy took over on the forty-niner vessels that greatly departed from the usual rule of the sea, that the captain was the master of the ship. The company was certainly composed of many master mariners, but now the ship was ruled by a miniature soviet.

The captain was now elected by majority rule and could also be deposed by the same. Ports of call and the route via the Strait of Magellan or Cape Horn were determined by majority vote. Each member of the company was pledged to share the labor and honor a well-intentioned list of by-laws, which often included regulations against swearing, gambling, and drinking, with fines imposed upon those who did. Unnecessary work on the Sabbath was discouraged, except when the life of the ship was in danger.

The ship was loaded up with picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and everything else they would need at the diggings. Bibles were distributed to all members of the company who were encouraged to implant their New England principles on California soil.

Many diarists were among the Cape Horn forty-niners who felt obligations to record for posterity their common experiences of the 17,000 - 18,000 mile voyages which would last from four to eight months; five and a half months on average. Letters posted home were left at ports of call or transferred to passing ships, and the similarity of the correspondence was stiking when compared in later years.

Seasickness was universal in the first days of the voyage as the diarists duly recorded. Inspections of the ship and critique of the food followed, along with avid descriptions of their shipmates. The sailing savvy of the captain, along with his eccentricities, was noticed in minute detail. A reshuffling of cargo usually went on at some time during the voyage.

The ships were becalmed as they entered warmer seas before picking up the trade winds. Card games increased as reading material ran low. Rich descriptions of tropical sunsets were recorded in sea diaries as well as other details of the weather.

The ships followed the winds to the south and worked their way eastward almost to the coast of Africa before working their way to the southwest.

As they neared the equator, the Rites of Neptune were observed with the ritual hazing of the first time sailors as was the tradition.

Every ship trailed baited troll lines for sport. It soon became a means of supplementing the shipboard cuisine. Many strange varieties of fish were hauled in and eaten. As they neared Cape Horn, gulls, albatrosses, and gooney birds were hooked as well and added to the menu.

On a number of ships, amateur theatricals were staged as well as athletic contests. Musicians made up every company and shipboard concerts included guitar, flute, violin clarinet, banjo, and singing of songs.

Passengers looked forward to ports of call as they broke the monotony of the long voyage. The most popular port on the Atlantic leg of the voyage was Rio de Janeiro. Travelers were rowed ashore to stretch out their legs on terra firma once again and to take in the sights of this enchanting city. A gourmet selection of exotic cuisine greeted the gold seekers. one diarist recalled a feast of "ham, omlette, roast chicken, steak, watercress and lettuce, bananas, oranges, guava jelly, citron, green cheese, claret and Madeira," as well as coffee that the diarist had never experienced in the United States. Many were charmed by a visit to the emperor's botanical garden. When the ships were fully provisioned and repaired, they set sail again for Cape Horn with many fine memories of their Rio sojourn.

Now, the forbidding seas off Patagonia greeted them as they proceeded southward on their journey. The choice had to be made to sail through the Straight of Magellan or to sail 'round the Horn. Both routes held their perils. Steamers and small schooners chose the shorter passage through the straight, where strong currents ran through the narrow channel and the ships faced the prevailing winds from the west. Gloomy skies brought sudden storms and snow squalls. All their mariner skills would be called upon until they reached the Pacific. They had to be lucky, too. The dangerous rocky shore was to be avoided at all costs. At night the campfires of primitive aboriginal peoples that inhabited this desolate place could be seen.

Larger square-rigged ships mostly opted for the longer passage around the Horn where the seas ran high. But if they sailed far to the south, they could catch the favorable winds they sought, that circled around somewhat at the southern latitudes near Antarctica, as mentioned in Matthew F. Maury's Sailing Directions, to carry them westward to the Pacific.

This was not always an easy thing to do. The most fortunate of ships could turn this corner in a week or less. Others less fortunate were held up for weeks on end, all the while bombarded by the cold Antarctic wind and high seas, where ships pitched about violently and passengers were forced to stay below. Some vessels, as in earlier days in the China trade, were forced to give up and sail around the world the other way.

Nearly all of the forty-niner vessels made it around the Horn to the Pacific, where they eagerly made their way to a port of call, most likely Valparaiso, Chile, or Callao, Peru.

Valparaiso was a most attractive city of wide plazas, where forty-niners tramped through the music filled streets sampling the local food and drink. They went to the theater, hired horses, visited the countryside and did their laundry in the streams. They bought curios, fruits, and nuts to take with them on their voyage.

Callao was described as "a mean, dirty hole, filled with sailor grog shops and low taverns." The only thing for the discriminating traveler to do there was to catch a stage to Lima for a visit.

Forty-niners with a romance bent looked forward to a possible enchanting visit to the island of Juan Fernández, of storybook myth, where Alexander Selkirk was once stranded and forever immortalized by Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.

After landing on the beach of some encountered island, they would search for Friday's footprints in the sand, hunt wild goats, fish from the rocks, and fill their casks with mountain spring water before sailing off again.

The voyage northward in the Pacific got tedious for all members of the company as the months at sea stretched out. In such smoky cramped conditions, travelers got on one another's nerves. All the books were read. Songs were played many times over till everyone was sick of hearing them.

Spirits began to rise again as the ships got closer to San Francisco. The most exciting point of the journey was sailing through the Golden Gate and anchoring off San Francisco. They began arriving in June.

What those early forty-niners saw was a makeshift city of tents and shacks in the dust and mud. The local citizenry had a rough appearance to them. The prices of everything were absolutely outrageous. Many of the landed forty-niners were disillusioned by this scene and were determined to push on to the gold fields, as soon as they had a taste of shore cooking and checked the post office for letters from home.

Often, the ships would sail across the bay to Sacramento, dodging mud flats and fighting off mosquitoes all the way. The ships, according to plan, would be their home and their base for mining operations. The master utopian plan was to share the work and the wealth of all future riches once they arrived at the gold fields.

This concept of communal utopianism was soon seen as highly impracticable and quickly fell by the wayside after arrival in Sacramento and it was every man for himself. The scene in Sacramento on one such ship was described in a doggerel poem written by Isaac W. Baker, from his: Journal of Proceedings on board the barque San Francisco, of and from Beverly for California:

The San Francisco Company, of which I've often told,

At Sacramento has arrived in search of glittering gold,

The bark hauled in, the cargo out, and that is not the worst

The Company, like all the rest, have had a talk and burst.

For 't was, talk, talk, growl, growl, talk, talk away,

The devil a bit of comfort's here in Californi-a.

While on the passage all was well, and every thing was nice,

And if there was a civil growl, 't was settled in a trice,

But here example had been set by companies before,

Who'd all dissolved and nothing less, so we did nothing more

But talk, talk, etc.

We'd forty men of forty minds, instead of one alone,

And each wished to convert the rest, but still preferred his own,

Now in some places this might do, but here it won't you see,

for independence is the word in Californi-e

At first the price of lumber fell, which made it bad for us,

Some wished to sell and some did not, which made the matter worse,

Some longed to start into the mines and let the Barkey stay

While others said it would n't do for all to go away.

Some longed to get their ounce a day, while others knew they couldn't,

And wished to share and keep all square, but then the workers

wouldn't.

A meeting of the whole was called the question put and tried,

Our Constitution voted down, our Bye Laws null and void.

Now carpenters can take a job and work for what they please,

And those who do not like to work can loaf and take their ease

And squads can form for traveling, or any thing they choose,

And if they don't a fortune make, they'll not have it to lose.

And can chat, chat, sing, sing, chat, chat away,

And take all comfort that they can in Californi-a.

Many of the ships were abandoned by the forty-niners and joined the growing ghost fleet at anchor in San Francisco Bay or at Sacramento. A few of the ships, particularly the schooners, sailed on in the coastal and Honolulu trade, and some were suitable for the bay and river traffic. Some ended up as warehouses. Others were dismantled and salvaged for their parts. The vast majority rotted away into the mud.

Minstrels caught the restless public spirit of the times and soon a silly catchy popular song, Oh Susannah, was heard, in different modified versions to fit the case and location, in every quarter of the world. Here are a couple different verses:

I came from Salem City,

With a washbowl on my knee,

I'm going to California,

The gold dust for to see.

It rained all night the day I left,

The weather it was dry,

The sun so hot I froze to death,

Oh! brothers, don't you cry.

Oh! California,

That's the land for me!

I'm Going to Sacramento

With my washboard on my knee.

I'll scrape the mountains clean old girl,

I'll drain the rivers dry.

I'm off for California,

Susannah, don't you cry.

Oh, Susannah,

Don't you cry for me,

I'm off to California

With my washbowl on my knee.

These verses and countless other versions; all ending with the same washbowl chorus, were taken as the anthem of the forty-niners. It was sung on the sailing ships on their way around Cape Horn, as well as by those who made their way through the mosquito-infested swamps of Panama. Out on the western prairies, those trekking to the gold fields in their wagon trains would sing the song around the campfires at night. It was sung all through the gold fields, often accompanied with banjos, fiddles, and guitars.

Each route to California offered up special problems to overcome. It was a long journey around the Horn, but ships were sailing every week. Those taking the overland route would have to wait till April and would not get to the gold fields until the fall. Eastern argonauts worried that if it took too much time to get there, all the gold would be gone. The shortest route was by Panama that was open all year. There were sailing ships and steamers leaving from eastern ports where passage could be booked to take passengers to the Isthmus, and the likelihood that a ship would pick them up at the Pacific side and take them on to San Francisco. Passage to El Dorado could be made in weeks instead of months.

The coming popularity of an Isthmus route to the West Coast of Panama had long been anticipated by far sighted commercial men such as William Henry Aspinwall. The man who owned the Ann McKim, and built the Rainbow and Sea Witch, and had sent Robert Waterman off to Canton on the Sea Witch for a cargo of China teas, porcelain, silks, and spices, had taken another gamble that was about to pay off handsomely.

Howland & Aspinwall had secured the government Pacific Mail Contract for the Panama to Oregon run. Aspinwall had lost out in his bid for the lucrative New York to Chagres, Panama, run to George "Live Oak" Law, but was determined to make a go of the Pacific run that he felt held great promise upon the conclusion of the Mexican War.

The Navy Department farsightedly specified in their contracts the use of steam vessels. In 1847, the contracts were signed with the Navy Department and on April 12, 1848, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company came into being with a bill enacted by the New York State Legislature with Howland & Aspinwall named as designated agents.

The shipyards of William H. Webb and Smith & Dimon were contracted to build three wooden-hulled paddle-wheeled steamers for $200,000 apiece. Webb would build the California and the Panama, Smith & Dimon would build the Oregon. They were sister ships. All were 200 feet long, with a beam of 33 feet and a draft of 22 feet. Diagonal iron strapping strengthened their hulls. The tonnage of these ships ranged from 1057 to 1099 tons. Power for the California and the Oregon was supplied by a single-cylinder side-lever engine built by Stillmen, Allen & Company's Novelty Works with twin boilers and 250 horsepower, 300 when stressed, that moved the 26-foot paddle wheels. The Panama was powered by an Allaire engine.

Next The White-Collar Route to El Dorado

The Era of the Clipper Ships
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