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By Root 727 0

feet beneath the surface, there is already a stratum of artificial productions which the entombed cities of Italy cannot exhibit. Knives, forks, spoons, chisels, files, and hardware of every description, gathered from the places of several conflagrations. Masses of nails exhibiting volcanic indications, stove plates and tin ware, empty bottles by the cartload and hundreds of other miscellanies, lie quietly and deeply interred in Sacramento Street, and perhaps will be carefully exhumed in days to come, and be distributed over the world as precious relics!” The Evening Picayune’s smug prophecy did not take long to come true. As early as the 1870s, excavation for construction unearthed relics of the gold rush period. The transient nature of San Francisco ensured that most residents were ignorant of the particulars of its past—and the “discoveries” that arose from beneath the streets and sidewalks delighted them.

Now, I stand watching the high-pressure hose strip away the shroud of mud and sand as history emerges from the buried ashes of a long-ago fire. The oak planks of the ship’s hull are solid, and the wood is bright and fresh. Even more amazing is the stench of burned wood and sour wine rising from the charred debris. A century and a half ago mud, water and sand sealed the wreckage of the ship so perfectly that time has stood still.

GENERAL HARRISON AND GOLD RUSH DAYS

The product of the venerable New England seafaring town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, General Harrison was launched from the banks of the Merrimack River in the spring of 1840. Built for a group of local merchants, General Harrison worked as a coastal packet out of Boston and New York, running south to New Orleans with passengers and cargo, then returning north with southern cotton. In 1846, the ship’s owners sold her to a consortium of well-known and moneyed Charlestown residents who had mercantile links to Pacific Coast ports from Chile to Alaska as well as Hawaii and China. The new owners sent General Harrison on a sixteen-month voyage around the world. After trading at Valparaiso, Tahiti, Hawaii and Hong Kong, she returned to New York in 1847. A new owner, Thomas H. Perkins, Jr., son of America’s richest man of the day, kept the ship in his fleet until 1849, the year of the exciting news that gold had been discovered in California.

San Francisco in the gold-rush days, 1851. In the background are the masts of crowds of ships along the waterfront and the store ships Niantic and General Harrison (circled). San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, Smithsonian Institution Collection All.781.2n1

The gold discovery sparked a “rush” for California’s riches. The editors of the New York Herald remarked in early January that the “spirit of emigration which is carrying off thousands to California… increases and expands every day. All classes of our citizens seem to be under the influence of this extraordinary mania… Poets, philosophers, lawyers, brokers, bankers, merchants, farmers, clergymen—all are feeling the impulse and are preparing to go and dig for gold and swell the number of adventurers to the new El Dorado.”

Most gold-seekers chose to travel to California by ship, and between December 1848 and December 1849, 762 vessels sailed from American ports for San Francisco. One of them was General Harrison. Sailing from Boston on August 3, 1849, the ship rounded Cape Horn to reach the Chilean port of Valparaiso. There, the ship’s agents, Mickle y Compañia, loaded merchandise from Chile’s farms, wineries and shops to sell in San Francisco. On February 3, 1850, the ship reached San Francisco. With her passengers off to the gold fields and her cargo sold, General Harrison would have been ready for another voyage. But the lure of gold was too much for her crew, who deserted and headed for the mines, leaving General Harrison, along with hundreds of other ships, idle on the San Francisco docks.

The waterfront was then a constantly growing, hectic center of activity. Every day, more ships arrived, workers landed cargoes, and thousands of men crowded