Pacific Coast Ship China PDF Download

The wooden, sidewheel-paddle steamship China boldly carried transpacific ocean passengers and freight 6,500 hazardous nautical miles from San Francisco, California, to Yokohama, Japan, and Hong Kong, China, between October, 1867 and June, 1879. She helped unite the East and West coasts of the United States, and developed trade between the youngest and one of the oldest civilizations in the world. China was the final and greatest steamship designed and constructed by one of the United States? preeminent wooden shipbuilders, William Henry Webb. She voyaged alone around South America from New York to San Francisco to begin her transpacific service. However, China?s longevity in trans-ocean trade was threatened from the outset. Sure enough, in 1879 the United States Congress mandated that future ships under its contracts must be constructed of iron with screw propellers. After 12 years of sterling performance, China was retired from the transpacific ocean trade, and served on west coast routes before being used as an quarantine ship. China was dismantled and burned in Tiburon, California in 1889. This book includes adventures of China?s famous cabin passengers on the transpacific route, including William Seward, who embarked three years and five months after he completed the purchase of Alaska by the United States Congress from Russia, and Anson Burlingame representing the Emperor of China in negotiations to improve relationships between the two great countries. This book describes the large number of steerage passengers, sometimes 1,200 on a single voyage from Hong Kong to San Francisco, creating violent opposition from the labor unions to this flood of cheap labor into America. During the dismantling of China her aft deckhouse was saved as a dwelling. Surviving as a residence for 90 years, the aft deckhouse was restored in 1979 by the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society. Named China Cabin, and used as a museum and meeting-place, it is the only structural survivor in the world of a ship built by William Henry Webb. Hillary Don February 20, 2013