We stood in past the heads, since known as the Golden Gates, and ran up the lower bay, when suddenly we saw displayed, from a staff, on the Presidio, the American flag, and we then knew that we were among friends. A few minutes later we sighted the fleet at anchor, with our country’s flag flying from the peaks of the ships, and we ran up and anchored off the little hamlet of Yerba Buena, as what is San Francisco was then called, after a voyage of one hundred and fifty-five days.
Commodore Stockton, in the frigate Congress, was then in command of the naval forces, and the sloop-of-war Portsmouth, Captain Montgomery, was also in the harbor. A few weeks later Commodore McKean came over from China in the Razee Independence; and as our two consorts arrived a week after us, and General Kearney reached Monterey with a force of dragoons, overland, it will be seen that the United States was in overpowering force in California.
We discharged our government stores, carrying them ashore in our boats and landing them on the beach near Clark’s Point, in the manner described by Dana in his “Two Years Before the Mast;” for everything was very primitive at Yerba Buena in those days, and it would have required a very vivid imagination to conceive that the bay would within a lifetime be lined with wharves, and that a superb city of several hundred thousand inhabitants was to replace the cluster of half a dozen adobe houses we saw before us.
Our cargo out, we took in a sufficient quantity of sand ballast, and in June sailed for Manila. Within a week after getting off the coast of California, we struck the southeast trades, and had a most delightful run across the Pacific Ocean, the wind scarcely varying a couple of points for six weeks, when we sighted Guam, one of the Ladrone Islands. As scurvy had made its appearance among our crew, Captain Arthur decided to anchor and lay in a supply of fruit and vegetables. The natives soon came off to us with quantities of limes, yams, and cocoanuts, which they gladly exchanged for any articles of hardware we could spare.
The following day we got under weigh and stood to the westward for the Straits of St. Bernardino. At midnight breakers were seen close on the weather bow. We wore ship instantly to the eastward and hauled close on the wind for an hour and a quarter, the wind not permitting us to lay better than east half south. At 1.45 A. M. we tacked to the southward, and hoped to weather this reef, which we had not found set down on our chart; but at 3.15 breakers were again seen on the weather bow too near to allow us to tack. We accordingly wore, and when before the wind the ship struck under the forefoot and remained stationary. The wind was S. S. E., and fortunately the water was as smooth as a mill-pond.
We furled all sails, and I was sent by Captain Arthur in the cutter to sound around the ship. I found the eastern edge of the reef on which we lay to be very steep, with shelves projecting beyond each other as it deepened. These edges were of very sharp and ragged coral, descending so rapidly as scarcely to allow room to lay an anchor on.
The reef was about one mile and a quarter in length from north to south, and perhaps one hundred and fifty yards in breadth from east to west, and in the form of a crescent. Its concave side to the eastward was that on which we lay, nearly in the centre, with our bow pointing directly over the reef. Under our jib-boom there was but five feet of water; under the stern eleven feet; under the fore chains fifteen feet on the port side and thirty feet on the starboard side, and under the main chains four fathoms on one side and eight fathoms on the other.
Returning and reporting these facts, Captain Arthur had all our boats hoisted out and a kedge anchor laid under the port quarter in deep water, and a hawser attached to it and taken to the capstan and hove taut. The stream anchor was next laid on the starboard bow and its cable hove taut. All three boats were manned and attached to a tow-line from the bowsprit end. The jib, spanker, and staysails were loosed ready for hoisting.
By eleven o’clock the wind veered to the southwest and became squally, the tide began to flow and the swell to heave. At 11.30 the ship began to move, but just then the hawser parted. Captain Arthur immediately ordered the boats to pull away about forty-five degrees abaft the starboard beam; the breeze freshened and gave a greater impulse to the strain of the stream cable, and, to our delight, the ship launched off and got sternway, which, the boats assisting, swung her around on her heel with her head to the northward.
“Cut away the stream cable, Mr. Kelson!” shouted the captain, half wild with excitement.