Pacific Mail Steamship Company
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The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was founded April 18, 1848 as a joint stock company under the laws of the State of New York by a group of New York City merchants, William H. Aspinwall, Edwin Bartlett, Henry Chauncey, Mr. Alsop, G.G. Howland and S.S. Howland. These merchants had acquired the right to transport mail under contract from the United States Government from the Isthmus of Panama to California awarded in 1847 to one Arnold Harris.
The company initially believed it would be transporting agricultural goods from the West Coast, but just as operations began, gold was discovered in California, and business boomed almost from the start. During the California Gold Rush in 1849, the company was a key mover of goods and people and played a key role in the growth of San Francisco, California.
The first three steamships constructed for Pacific Mail were the SS California, the SS Oregon, and the SS Panama. The Panama was sold to the Mexican government in 1868 and was renamed the Juarez.[1]
In 1850 the Pacific Mail Steamship Company established a steamship line competing with the U.S. Mail Steamship Company between New York and Chagres. George Law placed an opposition line of steamers (SS Antelope, SS Columbus, SS Isthumus, SS Republic) in the Pacific, running from Panama to San Francisco. In April, 1851, the rivalry was ended when the U.S. Mail Steamship Company purchased Pacific Mail steamers on the Atlantic side, and George Law sold his new company and its ships to the Pacific Mail.
One of the company's steamships, acquired when an eastern company, the New York and California Steamship Company went out of business, the Winfield Scott, ran aground on Anacapa Island in 1853.
In 1867 the company launched the first regularly scheduled trans-Pacific steamship service with a route between San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Yokohama, and extended service to Shanghai. This route led to an influx of Japanese and Chinese immigrants, bringing additional cultural diversity to California.
The company was a charter member of the Dow Jones Transportation Average.
In 1925 the company was purchased by Robert Dollar & Co..
[edit] References
[edit] See Also
[edit] External links
- Company history, hosted by the Mystic Seaport
- 2002 article about "San Francisco's own Titanic" [SS City of Rio de Janeiro] and her 1901 sinking in the GGNRA from the NPS "Park News"
- Pacific Mail Steamship Collectiona brief history with images of pioneering PMSS steamers, hosted by Potash & Company
- Editorial Cartoon, Harper's Weekly, March 6, 1875, "Any Thing But a 'Pacific Mail'". A criticism highlighting subsidies and bribery of the US Congress.
- Pacific Mail SS Co.
- F. N. Otis, Isthmus of Panama : history of the Panama Railroad and of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, together with a traveller's guide and business man's hand-book for the Panama Railroad, and the lines of steamships connecting it with Europe, the United States, the North and South Atlantic and Pacific costs, China, Australia, and Japan, Harper, New York, 1867
- The White-Collar Route to El Dorado, The Era of the Clipper Ships website
- The Panama Railroad, The Era of the Clipper Ships website
- The Panama Route 1848-1851; The Postal Gazzete, November 2006
- TheShipsList website: Steamships on the Panama Route - Both Atlantic and Pacific
- The history of APL and its forebears
