The Central Wharf of San Francisco, which is nearly a mile in length, is for some distance occupied on either side by Jew slopsellers; and, as these indefatigable gentlemen insist all over the world upon exposing their wares outside their shops, the first glance down Central Wharf impresses you with the idea that the inhabitants of the district have hung their clothes out to dry after a shower of rain. Scattered among the Jew shops are markets for vegetables and poultry, fishmongers, candy-sellers, (the Long Wharfers are very fond of sugar-plums), gambling-houses of the worst repute, and drinking-shops innumerable. Being narrow and crowded, and full of loaded drays, drunken sailors, empty packing-cases, run-away horses, rotten cabbages, excited steam-boat runners, stinking fish, Chinese porters, gaping strangers, and large holes in the planks, through which you may perceive the water, it is best to be careful in walking down Long Wharf, and to turn neither to the right nor to the left.
This busy street terminates at the city front; and from thence the wharf, which extends for half a mile into the sea, is flanked on either side by ships discharging their cargoes with great order and rapidity.
Here may be seen a fleet of those clippers to which the Californian trade gave rise. The “Queen of the Clippers� is one of the finest and largest of these ships, and is a beautiful model; she is extremely sharp at either end, and, “bows on,� she has the appearance of a wedge. Her accommodations are as perfect as those of a first-class ocean steamer, and are as handsomely decorated; and, as it is worthy of remark that great attention has been paid to the comfort of the crew, the sooner some of our shipowners copy that part of her construction the better. Nor should they overlook any longer that the Americans have long economised in ship labour very materially by the use of patent blocks, patent trusses, and more particularly in patent steering-gear.
It gives cause for reflection to observe how on board these mammoth clippers, one man, comfortably protected from the weather by a wheel-house, can steer the ship with ease in any weather, and to recall recollections of big English ships beating up against the monsoon, with three and even four men at the helm, tugging to get it up, or pulley-hauling to get it down, exposed on the deck in heavy sou’-westers and painted canvass frocks, while their faces are cut to pieces by the salt spray that the wind sends drifting along the deck. Yet comparatively few of our merchant vessel owners have availed themselves of these improvements. Scotland, as far as we are concerned, has most distinguished herself in the production of clippers, and the small class, similar to the “Marco Polo� and “Stornaway� stand first as specimens of mercantile naval architecture.
The building of clippers, if not originated by, was encouraged by the discovery of gold in California, for the valuable market that was so shortly afterwards opened to the United States afforded a field for the employment of ships that could perform a journey round the Horn in a space of time that would enable them to land a cargo, not only clean and in good order, but with a certain degree of regularity as regarded time. The ships that have sailed from English ports for San Francisco have been selected from a particularly inferior class of tubs, principally from the erroneous supposition that anything was good enough for the diggings. Then observe the mistake! The expensive dashing clipper leaves New York, and, after a three months’ passage, lands her cargo clean and dry in San Francisco (where the sale of packages depends very much on their outward as well as internal appearance); the English ship, which false economy has picked from about the worst in dock, after a passage of from eight to ten months, arrives in San Francisco, with her cargo. The market has not only gone by for the articles she brings, but these, from long confinement, and her unseaworthy qualities, are landed in such an unprepossessing state as to be almost unsaleable. Nor is this all—the clipper ship having discharged, sails for China, and takes home the first teas at a high rate of freight, discharges at London, and returns again to New York, full; having accomplished a rapid voyage round the world, and, in all probability, cleared a large portion of her first cost in her first voyage. But our English clunbungy can find no cargo to take home from San Francisco, there being no export; she knows better than to present herself in China as a candidate for teas, there is little chance of her getting guano, so she either goes home empty at a great expense, or, as is more often the case, is knocked down by auction for less than her value, and is converted into a floating store-ship.[8]
It was said, I remember, when these clippers first attracted attention, and before Australia had been found to be auriferous, that we had no field for the employment of such vessels, and that our own “A 1 for thirteen-year� ships were better adapted for our trade; that they were stronger and more lasting. Where we enjoy a monopoly of ship-transport, as for many years in some places we have done, the argument of “let well alone� is excellently prudent.
That our vessels are strong no one will deny who ever saw a teak-built ship with her heavy beams and prodigious wooden knees; that they are lasting follows as a matter of course, but this very qualification is at this moment our drawback to improvement. We are something like a man who has determined not to get a suit of clothes adapted for the dog-days until he has worn out his old winter garments, and has been unfortunate enough to have had these made of that imperishable article known as corduroy.
It is plain enough that we shall have comparatively few clipper ships until our enormous mercantile navy is worn out; and all we have now to regret is the stubbornness of that heart of oak whose durability we have been wont to laud in speech and song. In the meantime, unless Aberdeen and other ports work cheerily, the Californian clippers will bid for the carriage of the teas, and take the bread literally from between our teeth; and, what is still more galling, the Yankee clippers will take our Australian trade, if they have not already done so. We have a bold competitor on the waters now, and I regret to see that almost at the moment that the projected Panama and Sydney steam-line is withdrawn for want of government support, measures are being taken by the American government to connect San Francisco and China, and thus complete the first steam communication round the world; whilst the “Sovereign of the Seas� and “Golden Age� are conveying our emigrants from Liverpool to Australia. On the other hand, the spirit of speculation in building clipper ships in America has been so far overdone as to cause many of them to be too hastily “run up,� and a few of these have arrived in San Francisco, and in London, much strained and with damaged cargoes.
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The Chinese have emigrated to California in great numbers. Those in San Francisco are mostly engaged in mercantile pursuits, and supply their countrymen at the mines with necessaries. There has been great outcry in the gold regions here respecting the rapidly-increasing numbers of the Chinese miners, and it was proposed forcibly to stop their immigration; it was argued, rather dog-in-the-mangerly, that they collected vast quantities of gold from the soil that of right belonged to the Americans only, and that they carried their gold-dust to their own country to spend. The last objection had some justice in it, for undoubtedly it is contrary to the spirit of a young colony to encourage the immigration of a class of people who bring their own rice with them, and impoverish the auriferous soil without leaving a “pice� behind them for the permanent improvement of the country.