On the Pacific 1
SOLD June 2016 |
Boudoir-size cabinet-card format albumen print showing western passengers and Chinese crew members, perhaps from the engine room, aboard the Occidental & Oriental S.S. Company's steamship "San Pablo," 1884-1888. The San Pablo sailed a route from San Francisco to Yokohama, Japan and Hong Kong, China. She was grounded in fog, taken by pirates, and burned in the Formosa Channel in 1888. Card sized 8.5 x 5.25 inches (21x13 cm), with ink inscription on reverse reading "On the Pacific. Group of Passengers, Officers and Crew. After Deck."
In this first image of the group the identification "SAN PABLO" is visible (with some effort) on the ship's lifeboats.
The principle working crew of the San Pablo were Chinese from Hong-Kong, and a number of them appear in this image, their sooty clothing suggesting that they worked in the engine room. Her steerage traffic to the United States also consisted largely of Asians:
Following the practice of the Pacific Mail, the crews in deck, engine-room, and steward's departments were made up of Chinese, shipped at Hong-Kong. Their wages were lower than would have been paid to white crews, and they gave willing and efficient service... The number of first-class passengers carried... was... from thirty to sixty-eight in number. They were principally missionaries, government representatives, naval officers, merchants, and tourists... In the steerage... the number of Asiatics carried to the United States was sometimes over a thousand in a single ship.
( --John Haskell Kemble, "The Big Four at Sea: The History of the Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company ", Huntington Library Quarterly Vol. 3, No. 3 (Apr., 1940), pp. 339-357. Online at: http//www.jstor.org/stable/3816050. )
