1849 Gold Rush Ship's Log & Register
GUEST:
It is a journal of my great-uncle going from Boston to San Francisco on a ship, leaving in February of 1849 for the Gold Rush. They formed a mining company, leased the boat, and got on board and went around Cape Horn.
APPRAISER:
That's amazing.
GUEST:
This is his daily log of what happened and what his thoughts were and everything that went on in a six-month-- actually, seven month-- journey. They got there in October of 1849.
APPRAISER:
To San Francisco.
GUEST:
To San Francisco.
APPRAISER:
And tell me some of what they encountered along the way.
GUEST:
Well, it took them almost a week to leave Boston because of snow and ice. Everybody was sick on board. They couldn't get out of the harbor because the weather was so bad. Then the ship ran into foul wind, they couldn't go down towards Cape Horn easily, so they ended up going all the way out to the Azores to Pico Island. He talks about meeting people speaking Portuguese, and then resupplying the ship, and how the company back in Boston was concerned about how much food they were going through on the trip, because the trip was taking too long. And then they proceeded from the Azores back down to Cape Horn and continued on. When they got down towards Cape Horn, one of the members of the company died, and they had a burial at sea.
APPRAISER:
Wow.
GUEST:
And he says that he died well-- or easily, I guess he said-- and so they did the burial at sea, the captain said a prayer, and off he went. And they were talking about how they were gonna divvy up his clothes, and whether they were gonna sell them when they get to San Francisco and it was like, okay.
APPRAISER:
The realities...
GUEST:
The reality of sailing in 1849, going the long way around.
APPRAISER:
This is basically an 1849 overland diary, but by sea, so it's called a ship's log. And in it, we begin with here, we've got a complete roster, a header, where they sail from Boston around Cape Horn, to the Cape Horn, and on into San Francisco in 1849. And then a complete roster of all of the personnel on the long voyage. And then, to the right, we have... we just opened it to a random page here of the actual diary itself. And it details in amazing and marvelous detail all the encounters that happened to them on every end of the ship. And as you said, they arrived more or less safely in San Francisco, after a seven-month voyage.
GUEST:
Yeah, it's just incredible, and that, to me, that's only sort of the start of the story, because when they're on the boat, they're worried about whether there's going to be any gold left by the time they get there, and he basically finished saying, you know, "I'm giving this to someone who's going back," and sending it to his wife to let her know that he made it to San Francisco.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
He says, "I'm getting ready to go to the mines now," and that's it.
APPRAISER:
Did they find gold?
GUEST:
I don't believe so. That didn't make it down in the family. You know, that's one of those things where I think that would have made it in the family comments, "Oh, yes, your great-uncle struck gold." I would imagine that he was joining the majority of people and didn't.
APPRAISER:
I think you're right. It's absolutely a marvelous, original, authentic piece. I can't tell you how uncommon it is to find genuine 1849 ship's logs. Have you ever had it appraised?
GUEST:
No, never. It was sitting in a box, you know, in an envelope. When my parents passed, it ended up in a box in an envelope in my house.
APPRAISER:
Thank goodness it was preserved.
GUEST:
It was only luck, really.
APPRAISER:
Sure. I believe at retail, this item would bring between $40,000 to $50,000.
GUEST:
Wow. (chuckling): I had no idea.
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