A very good and informative read, published exactly 100 years after the California gold-rush of 1849! I chose to read this book because I actually do have an ancestor, William W. West, my 4th great-grandfather on my mother's side, who we believe did go to California at some point for the gold. The only thing we know is that he died there, somewhere in the new frontier of California, on February 17, 1856. He was married and had 11 children back in Maine. This book only talks about the years between 1849 and 1852, which brought major cholera outbreaks on ships arriving to the San Francisco Bay port in 1852. One report online shows there was an outbreak of the deadly, and highly contagious, diphtheria disease in the "autumn" of 1856, which is just a few months after the death of my ancestor, around San Francisco Bay:

[https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-101179231-bk#page/5/mode/1up].

I did find a Wm. W. West listed as a passenger on the "Mary Reed", a 103-ton schooner, which left out of Belfast, Maine, to San Francisco Bay via Cape Horn, on Nov. 27, 1849. The passage by ship took approximately 160 days or more, that's about 5-1/2 months. ("History of the City of Belfast in the State of Maine, Vol. I, p. 705-8). Recorded ship manifests become sketchy and even non-existent as more and more men shipped out and the novelty of it all wore off. This has been my only clue, but who knows for sure if this was my ancestor. There were so many William Wests living in the area during that time.

In reading up on the history of the routes and conditions of sea travel to California during the goldrush, I wanted to get a better understanding of what he may have gone through to get to California. Was he a part of the '49ers, or did he travel sometime in the following years after the first year rush? We may never know for sure.

People from all over the world came to California during the gold-rush, but this book focuses on the United States and its people and avenues of travel from 1849 to 1852. The gold-rush continued through 1855. The author gathered information from their diaries and journals, and early California newspapers and periodicals. It tells an interesting history of the exact day that sparked the rush, how the early Americans reacted, how they raised the substantial amount of money needed to get to California (individual donors or formed organizations), how they secured passage, and their travelling conditions. All very interesting! Not too stuffy or boring like most history books. You will at least want to follow along, using a map. One is provided at the back of the book, but hard to read.
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INTERESTING NOTES FROM THE BOOK
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THE DEPARTURE

A passage by sea to San Francisco Bay in 1849 would have cost from $250 to $400 (equivalent value today, in 2020, would be $8,343.00 to $13,349.00), and that was just the cost of the passenger ticket. It was recommended a capital of $750 ($25,029 today) as a minimum requirement for expenses during the 5-1/2 to 7-month journey, plus the cost of clothing and food for a year's stay that was erroneously recommended by local store keepers and other "mining experts" trying to make a buck. That was an awful lot of money back then. Stay-at-homes would front these adventurers for a share, which they believed to be a sure thing. Men from all over the country were leaving by the score, as if the U.S. were preparing for a war. Just about everything you could think of was in short supply. Shelves from all over the country were empty. Supplies, clothing and food were being swooped up by men leaving for the west. Many never even considered just how they were going to get all these supplies to a mining camp, and so many things they had wasted their money on, such as mini cannons for shooting Indians, strong-boxes for carrying home all their gold dust, extra warm clothing...were filling up the hills in San Francisco Bay, piled high, full of junk that was needlessly sold to them for the voyage over.


THE VOYAGE


The migration for California began in spring of 1849. The ‘49ers had one of two choices: 1) Pay the captain and sail the 15,000 miles in a ship, entering and rounding the Horn during the height of the Antarctic winter, or 2) Go by land, which was only a fifth the distance, but you had to provide your own supplies with wagon and oxen, traverse over some rough terrain and possibly encountering Indian attacks, still very much a real threat.

The first couple of weeks on sea was all about developing your sea legs and getting over seasickness. Men were vomiting everywhere, even below deck and no one concerned themselves much with cleaning up until it passed. Then they were able to enjoy themselves with games, writing in their journals, writing letters, pulling pranks, but most important...reading matter.

After a five or six week voyage, nearly all the ships on the round-the-Horn route stopped at either Rio de Janiero, Brazil, or the island of St. Catherine, for an average of about 10 days, to restock food and water and make repairs to the ship. At this point, all food and water were nearly exhausted. It was so hot, tar would be seeping through the boards on the ship, and everyone pretty much slept on deck out in the open because below deck was suffocating heat.

Upon leaving port and heading for the Cape around the tip of the continent, the weather drastically changed and became more treacherous. Violent sleeting storms while sailing around the tip were continuous. It instantly changed from summer to winter with temperatures dipping below freezing. Men huddled below deck, out of the sleeting rains, but still, all their clothing and bedding remained damp and wet throughout.

The option of the cut-across at Panama, which saved months of travel time, a rough and very expensive five day, 60 mile journey (before the railroad was constructed in 1855) became a viable option only a couple of months before the great gold-rush. The U.S. had just established mail ships with cabins, placing them on each side of the harbors at Panama so they could avoid the long and arduous route around the Horn. These ships were designated ships strictly to Panama, and gold-rushers could opt for those vessels, and many did. But, there were more people crossing than there were ships passing to pick up the men on the other side. So, thousands were left waiting for weeks and weeks until they ran out of money or died of disease, yellow fever, malaria, jaundice, cholera, or dysentery, that had cropped up due to the filthy conditions of living in tents spread out everywhere. The cross-over from Nicaragua to the west coast, saving about a thousand miles of travel, didn't begin until summer of 1851 when the New Yorker Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt's plans had already been in the making to monopolize this route to California by building a future canal.

Other ports the ships would pull into while in route to San Francisco were Vera Cruz, Chagres, and Talcahuano and Valparaiso in Chile, on the Pacific coast. They had made it through the most treacherous part of the journey, so here the men celebrated. Some ships would make it a point to stop at Juan Fernandez Island, popularly known as Robinson Crusoe's Island, in which he had lived 150 years earlier, in late 1600- early 1700, in recluse for 28 long years. Of course, the story was just a novel...you know, fictional...not real. It was actually based on a Scottish castaway who had survived on Mas a Terra in the Juan Fernandez Island, now a part of Chile, for four years. In 1849, there were only about a dozen people left living on the island where before it was a penal colony, holding a large number of prisoners and their guards. But here, they were able to replenish their water supply with the best fresh spring water around and scores of wild fruit, and chop enough wood to get them through the last leg of the journey...and spend a day hiking to see the cove now known as "Robinson Crusoe's cove". In 1966, the island was officially renamed Robinson Crusoe Island.

The sea trek northward on the west coast of South America to San Francisco turned out to be quite the ordeal, sometimes extremely slow as they constantly fought against a driving north wind and storms that pushed them back southwards again, sometimes putting them weeks behind their arrival time to San Francisco Bay. Upon arriving into the bay, the first sight they saw was basically a crowded ship cemetery on the banks bogged down in the mud where early in the rush all passengers, crew, and captain abandoned the ships and headed to the hills. Some diaries said some of the hulls had windows and doors built into them and were being used as stores filled with supplies for the miners.

STEAMSHIPS

Steamships were also used and built to accommodate more passengers. But, they were more susceptible to disease, such as yellow fever and, mainly, cholera, spreading among the passengers because of the close, cramped and filthy conditions, in steerage, and for the fact that they were crossing overland in either Panama or Nicaragua. By the time these steamers reached San Francisco, most steamers had many burials at sea, up to 20 or more deaths while in route, and I’m sure more upon arrival at port. By 1952, death ships were arriving from both Panama and Nicaragua, so the preferred and safest, but longest route, was still by way of the dangerous Horn. ( )

1949 edition signed by author