Getting the New World to see the elephant (California) is a great story, and one that relys entirely on the propriety of sea rules, ie., captain trumps marshall once underway. "Just testing the boilers" - right!
The really cool thing about West Coast steamers is their East Coast style - mirror images of the Hudson River boats that helped to define the gold fields as a sort of provincial Massachussetts, with San Francisco as a sort of wooden Boston. And their names - Chrysopolis, Antelope, Yo-Semite and of course New World - cant be beat. Paddlers were running mails to the Pacific even before the World Rushed In - with the Pacific Mail's vessels suddenly encountering hoardes of gold seekers in Panama who needed only to cross the Isthmus and cach a steamer to get to the golden prize.
Some day (right!) I'd like to model a pair of imaginary vessels to accent my 1866 Blood River Rail Road of California model railroad layout in HO or 1:87; the Fanny Patter, a single stack stern wheeler, and the magnificent side wheel palace steamer New Republic, pride of the Blood River. Its hard not to imagine the New Republic gliding past Sacramento and the Chrysopolis enroute to San Francisco, or Fanny Patter's crew using poles to push her off a slough.
I did just find my copy of Steamboat days - the 1920s one - and look forward to falling asleep in the midst of Daniel Drew's malicious exploits. And we think Enron was bad.
Cheers,
Jim
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