Pacific Mail Steamship Company


The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was founded April 18, 1848, as a joint stock company under the laws of the State of New York by a group of New York City merchants. Incorporators included William H. Aspinwall, Edwin Bartlett, Henry Chauncey, Mr. Alsop, G.G. Howland and S.S. Howland.

History

Founding

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company was established to carry US mail on the Pacific leg of a transcontinental route via Panama. The federal government discussed the possibility of creating subsidies for a private shipping company, similar to the model already established in Britain for the Cunard Line and the British Mail Steam Packet Company. Such a policy served the larger objective of annexing and developing Oregon. President James K. Polk brought the Oregon Territory into the Union in 1846. Developing and maintaining the new land required the development of faster transportation and communications between the eastern seaboard and the remote northwest.

At first the federal mail subsidy program served a second objective: the establishment of civilian steamships which could be easily converted to warships or privateers during times of war. Thus the 1845 federal enabling legislation vested authority of mail contracts with the Secretary of the US Navy. His dual mandate was letting federal mail contracts and overseeing the construction of the steamers to ensure that they would be suitable for conversion to warships. In accordance to Polk’s aggressive program for developing Oregon, Congress passed more specific laws in for mail subsidies early in 1847. The new laws approved funding for four naval steamers, directed the US Department of the Navy to supervise the construction of these ships, and directed the Secretary of the Navy to contract with private carriers to carry US Mail to Oregon via Panama. Initially they planned for monthly mail service. One set of ships was to serve the Atlantic leg between the eastern US and Panama; the other set was to serve the Pacific leg.
Secretary Mason set the terms for the Pacific mail contract: a steamer would be required to sail from Panama to Astoria, Oregon in thirty days or less. He awarded the first contract to Arnold Harris, a straw buyer from Arkansas. The contract paid $199,000 annually and was in effect for ten years. Just days later, Harris assigned the mail contract to William H. Aspinwall, who brought in three partners: Edwin Bartlett, Henry Chauncey, and Gardiner G. Howland. They incorporated the Pacific Mail Steamship Company on April 12, 1848 with a capital stock of $500,000.

California Gold Rush

The first three steamships constructed for Pacific Mail were the, of 1050 tons, the SS Oregon, of 1250 tons, and the SS Panama, of 1058 tons. The company initially believed it would be transporting agricultural goods from the West Coast, but just as operations began, gold was found in the Sierra Nevada, and business boomed almost from the start. During the California Gold Rush in 1849, the company was a key mover of goods and people and played a key role in the growth of San Francisco, California.
In addition to their maritime activities Pacific Mail also ran some of the earliest steamboats on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, between San Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton. Domingo Marcucci came from Philadelphia in the Pacific Mail steamship SS Oregon with a knocked-down steamboat in its hold. He started a shipyard in San Francisco on September 18, 1849, on the beach at Happy Valley, at the foot of Folsom Street, east of Beale Street. Marcucci's company assembled the Captain Sutter in six weeks. Built for the Aspinwall Steam Transportation Line, owned by George W. Aspinwall, brother of William Henry Aspinwall, it was one of the first steamboats that ran between San Francisco and Stockton, in 1849. Also for the Pacific Mail, Marcucci next converted the 153 ton side-wheel steamboat El Dorado that had been rigged as a 3 masted schooner for the trip around Cape Horn, to be used for the Sacramento run. Subsequently in March 1850, for the same company, he assembled the Georgiana, a small 30 ton side-wheel steamboat made in Philadelphia, knocked down and sent by sea also for the Sacramento run. That April Georgiana pioneered the shortcut route between Sacramento and Stockton through a slough in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta that was between the Sacramento River and Mokelumne River, which afterward became known as Georgiana Slough.

1850–1869

In 1850, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company established a steamship line competing with the U.S. Mail Steamship Company between New York City and Chagres. George Law placed an opposition line of steamers in the Pacific, running from Panama to San Francisco. In April 1851, the rivalry was ended when the U.S. Mail Steamship Company purchased Pacific Mail steamers on the Atlantic side, and George Law sold his new company and its ships to the Pacific Mail. One of the company's steamships, the SS Winfield Scott, acquired when the New York and California Steamship Company went out of business, ran aground on Anacapa Island in 1853. In 1854, Marshall Owen Roberts purchased Law's interest and became president of Pacific Mail.
During the American Civil War the ships of the Pacific Mail, that carried the gold and silver of the western mines to the eastern states were under threat from the Confederate Navy in the form of commerce raiders, and several plots to seize one of their steamships for its precious cargo or to convert it into a raider to capture one of its other ships with such cargo. After one of these plots, that of the Salvador Pirates came to light, to prevent any further attempts to seize Pacific coast shipping, General McDowell ordered each passenger on board American merchant steamers to surrender all weapons when boarding the ship and every passenger and his baggage was searched. All officers were armed for the protection of their ships. Detachments of Union soldiers sailed with Pacific Mail steamers.
In 1867, the company launched the first regularly scheduled trans-Pacific steamship service with a route between San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Yokohama, and extended service to Shanghai. This route led to an influx of Japanese and Chinese immigrants, bringing additional cultural diversity to California.
As the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads met in Utah in 1869, the profitability of the Pacific Mail on the run from Panama to San Francisco ended. Many of its ships were sold or put on other routes.

1870–1949

While docked at San José de Guatemala, the Pacific Mail steamship SS Acapulco was involved in the Barrundia Affair of 1890. General Juan Martín Barrundia, a Guatemalan rebel general wanted by the Guatemalan government, was killed aboard ship after an attempted arrest by Guatemalan police, who hauled down the American flag and raised the Guatemalan flag in its place. The affair led to the recall of the U.S. Minister to Central America, Lansing Bond Mizner, by President Benjamin Harrison.
The company was a charter member of the Dow Jones Transportation Average.
In 1925, the company was purchased by Robert Dollar, of the Dollar Steamship Company. With the government bail-out of the Dollar Line in 1938, ownership passed to American President Lines, but by this time, PMSS essentially existed only on paper. It was formally closed down in 1949, after just over a century of existence.

Ships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company

. Photo by Lai Afong.