30 PACIFIC COD FISHERIES. 
Col. C. L. Taylor dipped in as a venture about 33 years ago, and he still 
refers sadly to what it cost him for his experience. 
In 1874 and again in 1876 a Capt. Jacobsen sent the little schooner San 
Diego to the Choumagin Island grounds under Capt. Wentworth. Two voyages 
were enough; then he sent her sealing. Explaining the change, he said: “ Well, 
Capt. Wentworth is a goot mon, 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 questions 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 his vessel into other trade, and she was finally lost in the Bering Sea 
bringing down a company of Alameda mining men from Golovin 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. Capt. 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 bankruptecy—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 1882 to 1888 Hd. H. Hansen, of Wright & Bowne, and Capt. A. Ander- 
son, now of the Lewis, Anderson, Foard Co., with some others, operated the 
schooner Isabel, Capt. 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 Jsabel 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 
erew 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 ©. 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 1886 James Madison and some of his associates fitted out the schooner . 
I'rancis Alice, and also started a little station at Ikatok in Alaska. The fish 
