PACIFIC COD FISHERIES 409 



Col. C. L. Taylor dipped in as a venture about 33 years ago, aud lie still 

 refers sadly to what it cost him for his experience. 



In 1874 and again in 1876 a Captain Jacobsen sent the little schooner San 

 Dieyo to the Choumagin Island grounds under Captain Wentworth. Two voy- 

 ages were enough ; then he sent her sealing. Explaining the change, he said : 

 " Well, Captain Wentworth is a goot ruon, but he is too expensible." 



James J. Laflin, or, as everybody " on the front " knew him, Jimmy Laflin, 

 a sailor boarding-house keeper, who would furnish a crew for any vessel " and 

 no question asked," operated the schooner Alaska in the codfisheries during 

 the seasons of 1876-1879. The first two years the cargoes arrived on a bare 

 market and the profits were good — good enough to induce such an increased 

 catch by him and others as swamped the market, and after the two years of 

 good business and then two years of correspondingly bad business, Jimmy 

 diverted ius vessel into other trade, and she was finally lost in the Bering Sea 

 bringing down a company of Alameda mining men from Goloviii Bay. 



Johnston & Veasey (1877-1879) were among the old-timers at it. They held 

 on for three years. Veasey, later, drifted into a small produce business and 

 died poor many years ago. Captain Johnston got down to going to sea again on 

 monthly wages and then drifted around the water front looking for a berth 

 of some kind and finally disappeared. 



Another of the old-timers (1879-1884) was John Molloy, the junk and second- 

 hand man of Clay Street, with the old brig Glencoe in the codfish business as a 

 side issue. Like everything else that old John had, the vessel was poor, the 

 salt was poor, and the fish were, of course, yellow or sour, dried up or slimy, 

 but they went onto the market and helped damn Pacific codfish. Old John had a 

 brother-in-law, a wealthy wholesale grocer, who furnished checks to keep him 

 going. When the brother-in-law withdrew his support, old John went around 

 town, bought everything he thought his credit would stand, and quietly went 

 into bankruptcy — paying nothing on the dollar. He is dead and doubtless 

 gone to his just reward. Any unkindness I may feel toward old John may 

 possibly be because we were on the list of creditors when the end came. 



From 18S2 to 188S Ed. H. Hansen, of Wright & Bowne, and Capt. A. Ander- 

 son, now of the Lewis, Anderson, Foard Co., with some others, operated the 

 schooner Isabel, Captain Nickerson, in this business. For the first two or three 

 years they caught the market short and did so well that they added the brig 

 W. H. Meyer. But about this time the production began to exceed the demand, 

 and they soon had to drop out the brig. Business became so poor they did not 

 keep the old Isabel in good repair, and in the spring of 1888, while on her way 

 to the fishing banks, she opened up somewhere out at sea. As many of the 

 crew as could do so got into the dories, and after suffering many privations 

 about half of them were rescued more nearly dead than alive. This ended the 

 venture, and the partners paid up their losses and quit. 



In 1883 Higgins & Collins, the wood and lumber men, with Wheeler Bros., 

 small tugboat men, fitted out the schooner Bonanza on an eastern basis, import- 

 ing eastern fishermen and eastern gear. They cured their fish on the deck of 

 the vessel in Oakland Creek, and when they closed up their accounts each of 

 the partners was an even $2,500 to the bad. That schooner Bonanza had an 

 eventful and varied career. Built in 1875 as a yacht for William C. Ralston, 

 the brilliant but unfortunate manager of the Bank of California, she has been 

 freighter, trader, codfisherman, and finally as a whaler was crushed in the ice 

 last year in the Arctic near Herschel Island. The story of her voyages to the 

 remote and unfrequented waters of the North and South Pacific, the Behring 

 Sea. and the Arctic Ocean would be worthy the pen of Robert Louis Stevenson. 



In 1SS6 James Madison and some of his associates fitted out the schooner 

 Francis Alice, and also started a little station at Ikatok in Alaska. The fish 

 were offered on the street by Frank Bates, a broker, but the trade was filled 

 up by the old companies, and the fish found such slow sale that the whole cargo 

 was bought in by this company at a very low price. We later took over the 

 station, and the schooner and the business was entirely closed out. Like a 

 butterfly, it lived but one summer. 



In 1894 a Captain Jorgenson bought the condemned steamer Salinas, con- 

 verted her into a three-masted schooner, rechristening her the Uranus, and sent 

 her codfishing. He did fairly well for two years then, with the backing of the 

 firms outfitting him, he added the W. F. Harriman, also a condemned hull 

 refitted. At the end of the third year his whole oufit passed into the hands of 

 those who had been backing him, and he was known in the codflish business no 

 more. 



