The First Forty-Niners
28 FEBRUARY 1849
THE FIRST FORTY-NINERS
In the frosty chill of the morning of 24 January 1848, a millwright named James T. Marshall walked the length of a newly dug millrace off the American River in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada. Stooping to inspect a small puddle, a yellow lump about the size of a quarter caught his eye. Thinking it was “fool’s gold,” Marshall smashed he lump between two stones but was surprised to find it only flattened a bit. He tossed the lump into his pocket and returned to camp that night. Four days later Marshall showed the lump to his boss, ranch owner John Sutter.
This same month a treaty ended the Mexican War and ceded California to the US. And by the time the first Pacific Mail Line steamer, SS California, reached the Golden Gate this day, “gold fever” had gripped the world. Her eager 300 passengers were the first “rushers” to arrive, all seeking gold rumored to be as thick as one’s hand just beneath the topsoil. Each expected to earn thousands in a day’s panning. Throughout 1848, less than twelve ships had called on San Francisco, but in the next year 549 ships delivered adventurers from all world’s nations.
Nearly as handsome were the profits to be made ferrying fortune-seekers to California. Many packet companies were caught up in this frenzy, though it carried a predictable downside. Too often a ship’s crew deserted along with the disembarking passengers, betting on their chances to get rich quick. And against competition from “El Dorado,” it was nearly impossible to recruit replacement crews. Arriving ships had little hope of getting underway again. Within a day of California’s arrival, for example, only her captain and a cabin boy remained aboard. Neither were US Navy warships immune. Despite public floggings of captured deserters in 1849, most Navy crews thinned out rapidly after their ships tied up. The Commodore of the Pacific Squadron, CAPT Thomas ap Catesby Jones, decried the situation in a letter to the Secretary of the Navy stating the high desertion rates made it unrealistic to maintain a Navy presence in California for the foreseeable future.
By the early 1850s, over 500 empty hulks lay rotting in Yerba Buena Cove. The rapid influx of people created housing shortages ashore as prices skyrocketed. Rather than return to sea, it became more profitable to beach these stranded ships as hotels, shops, or bars. This was the fate of many gold rush ships who, over subsequent years, fell victim to fire, earthquake, or were covered over by the expanding city. In fact, the occasional modern-day San Francisco construction project continues to uncover subterranean remnants of this fleet of beached gold rush vessels.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 6 MAR 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Cutler, Carl C. Queens of the Western Ocean: The Story of America’s Mail and Passenger Sailing Lines. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1961, pp. 279, 280, 287.
“High and Dry.” AT: userwww.sfsu.edu/~gbpabst/highdry.html, November 1999.
Kinder, Gary. Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998, pp. 3-12.
Nolte, Carl. “Ships Under San Francisco.” San Francisco Chronicle, 14 March 1999, FROM: www.sfchronicle.com/archive/ 1999/03/14/SC103929.dtl, November 1999.
Reid, Shelley. “The Ships of the San Francisco Gold Rush.” Sea History, No. 90, Autumn 1999, pp. 34-35.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Over half the US Army troops garrisoning California stole away too. Wages for an Army PVT in 1848 were $6 a month, and 10 times this could easily be made in a day’s work in the gold fields.
Lots near Portsmouth Square in San Francisco sold for $16.50 in 1847. The same lots sold for $6000 a year later and for $45,000 in 1849. Lumber was 25 times more expensive than on the East Coast, and a construction laborer could ask a wage of $30/day, thirty times the normal rate. One can easily see why it became profitable to beach abandoned ships on the nearby tidal flat, build a gangplank walkway, and open a hotel. The brig SS Euphemia served as the city’s first jail and later her first insane asylum. SS Niantic, converted to an office building and later a bar, was uncovered in 1978 and now resides with the Maritime Museum. Today, there are about twenty known ship hulks buried within a few blocks of the Jackson Street Wharf, though it has been estimated that a hundred brigs, barks, and schooners lie beneath the “City by the Bay.” No US Navy warships are thought to be so interred.