Uncommon Companions-a Rat, a Seal, and Miners on San Francisco Bay's Blossom Rock

摘要

By 23 April 1870, a small group of miners had left their home out in the middle of San Francisco Bay, located just feet above the Bay's tide-swept waters. Their wood-frame residence was also occupied by a rat and visited daily by a seal. The miners, a typically superstitious lot, cared for and fed the rat and welcomed the seal's inquisitive behavior. After four months of determined work, at precisely 2:00pm on a very pleasant Saturday afternoon, an electrically detonated charge of nearly twenty-two tons of blasting powder ripped their mine apart. Tens of thousands of spectators ashore and afloat witnessed the towering geyser of rocks and seawater, 200 feet across, rise almost 300 feet into the air before raining back down to the Bay. Just 1,500 yards from the port of San Francisco and midway between Alcatraz and Yerba Buena Islands, Blossom Rock was ground zero for the explosion.