Through the Golden Gate

摘要

San Francisco Bay has been a destination for ships ever since the Spanish first settled the region in the 1770s. However, not until the Gold Rush of 1848, and the takeover of California by the Americans, did the Bay became a major centre for shipping on the North American West Coast. Old photos still exist showing hundreds of sailing ships rotting along the Bay because, once anchored, their crews quickly abandoned them for the gold fields By the time of the American Civil War, only a dozen years later, regular coastal shipping routes were being established from San Francisco south to Panama and Cape Horn, north to the Columbia River, Puget Sound and Alaska, and across the Pacific to Asia. The large sidewheel paddle steamers operated by the Pacific Mail Line became favourites of passengers during this period but many cargoes, including grain, were still dependent on sailing ships into the 20th century. One of the Bay's regular visitors under sail was the steel-hulled Balclutha, built in Glasgow in 1886, and still on display at San Francisco's Maritime National Historical Park. As San Francisco's economy blossomed, finger piers quickly sprouted from the city's waterfront, giving the town the appearance of New York's lower Manhattan by 1906. In that year an earthquake nearly levelled the city but left the wharves intact. Over the next two decades the Bay came into its own as a transportation centre, as well as a centre for shipbuilding.