Sea History 117 - Winter 2006-2007

million in exports. By 1881, no fewer than on an overhead wire to the cliffs, or board Coast Seaman's Union, in 1885. The CSU is 559 sailing ships, averaging some 1,250 by board, down a wooden apron chute. As a good vehicle to examine the multiethnic, tons, assembled at San Francisco to load rhe redwood forests of the California coast transnational nature of the maritime industhat year's grain harvest. were denuded, the base of operations shifted try in the nineteenth century. Founded by a Most of these grain ships loaded at the further north from Redwood City to the pair of immigrants, Irishman Frank Roney Carquinez Straits, a body of water in San Douglass fir forests of Coos Bay and Gray's and Pole Sigismund Danielwicz, it included Pablo Bay where oceangoing vessels, river Harbor. The management of far-flung !um- Finns, Danes, Swedes, and Germans among craft, and rail lines met. With 4-1/2 miles ber kingdoms, centered in San Francisco its first members. In later years, CSU merged of wharves, over half the ships clearing San and the Pacific Northwest, allowed for the wirh rhe Steamship Sailors Union to form Francisco for foreign ports departed from application of new management strategies: the Sailors Union of the Pacific, an communities like Vallejo, where the Sperry individuals like Asa Simpson soon parlayed organization that would be led for many mills were located, or across the -----------------;-;ullRAR>'==t:>1':r:co=11111:11 years by a pair of Norwegian Strait, where the Port Costa • nationals, Andrew Furuseth and warehouse could accommodate Harry Lundeberg. over 70,000 tons of grain. These Immigrants continued ships might anchor there for to pour into the region in promonths, waiting for favorable digious numbers. In 1870, San changes in international grain Francisco received some 18,000 prices. Once the ships cleared immigrants, mostly from Asia, the harbor, their holds carried which placed the city's populaaway 1.2 million tons of wheat tion fourth in the United States. and another 900,000 barrels of With 150,000 residents by 1870 flour. The priciest cargo ever and 350,000 by 1890, the city shipped out of California was held about one-fifth of the popnot gold, but California grain, ulace of the entire West Coast headed to drought-stricken and climbed to seventh largest (above) Balclutha, shown here sailing under the name Star of Alaska, England. A typical cargo of city in the country. In that year, carried very typical cargoes in and out of San Francisco, including grain, wheat in the 1870s and 1880s San Francisco was the nation's lumber, and salmon. Today, the ship is owned by the National Park Serearned roughly $150,000 in fourth largest market for foreign vice and is part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park. profit. The hearty California trade! The ocean-going steam (below) Mare Island Shipyard, 1911. (Library of Congress photo) crop kept well through the long passenger fleet plying in and voyage around the Horn and provided a this into considerable fortunes. out of San Francisco in these years numsteady return each year. Many of these grain Simpson, who arrived in San Francis- bered some fifty vessels, and they regularly carriers were British-built steel- or iron- co from Maine in 1849, built 65 vessels in ran to China, Latin America, Australia, the hulled vessels, which transported the annu- Coos Bay, Oregon, and quickly established Pacific Northwest, and numerous Southern al harvest to Liverpool or other ports. The an international business with customers in California ports. Welsh immigrant Charles technological innovations of Silicon Valley Chile, Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand. Goodall began his seafaring career on the in the late twentieth century are often tout- Among the many vessels Simpson launched bay in 1850, ferrying fresh water from Saued as the birth of Bay Area globalization, were the Willie R. Hume (the first four-mast- salito to San Francisco; years later he was but it was really the maritime connections ed barquentine built on the West Coast), a founding member of the Pacific Coast of the nineteenth century that established the City of Papeete (which ferried mail and Steamship Company, linking Pacific ports San Francisco as a major player in global general freight to Tahiti), and the Western from San Diego to Vancouver. economies.

Shore (the only clipper ship launched on the From 1867, the Pacific Mail SteamWhile most of the agricultural prod- West Coast). Recognizing the potential for a ship Company maintained a fleet of governucts being transshipped out of San Francis- vertically integrated monopoly, Danish im- ment-subsidized screw steamers, such as the co came from the rich agricultural regions migrant Charles Nelson founded the largest City ofPeking, which made 116 round-trips of California's central valley, other com- lumber conglomerate in the world, with sev- between San Francisco and Yokohama in modities flowed through the Golden Gate eral sawmills and a fleet of thirty steamers, twenty years, carrying passengers and mail from points throughout the Pacific Rim. which transported the cargo from the Pacific to Japan, China, Australia, and New ZeaGreat quantities oflumber were transported Northwest to the Bay Area. The work was ex- land. The PMSSC was soon rivaled by the from dog-hole ports north of the city to San ceedingly difficult; the frightful loss of men Oriental and Occidental line, maintained Francisco in coastal vessels, loading their engaged in this, "the most dangerous work by the Union Pacific railroad, employredwood cargo, sling by sling from a trolley in the maritime industry," led to the creation ing thousands of Chinese sailors at a time of the first Pacific Coast maritime union, the when employment opportunities for that