Incidents of Shipwreck; or the Loss of the San Francisco.
Philadelphia: Willis P. Hazard, 1855. Hardcover. 108p. Original cloth rebacked with most of original backstrip mounted and some with gilt stamping added at both ends. 15 cm. Original endpapers preserved with binder's tape now providing sturdy hinges. Bookplate of Carson Hunter White inside front cover. Bookplate of Charles Fleischmann III (partially detached from the now glue-marked bottom three quarters of the front free endpaper. Some waterstaining and browning on right half of title-leaf. The SS San Francisco, a 280 foot long two masted steamer built for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, was intended to operate between San Francisco and Panama. She was acting partially as a troop ship carrying 8 companies of the US Army's Third Artillery Regiment as well as quite a few civilians on its maiden voyage around Cape Horn to San Francisco. The ship was apparently so full that many of the soldiers slept on deck in tents. Cooper, the author and an Episcopal priest, was heading with his wife and their four youngest children to Rio di Janeiro where he was being sent to establish a Protestant Episcopal Church mission. The ship embarked from New York in December, 1853 and encountered a powerful winter storm (a late season hurricane?) which heavily damaged the ship leaving it afloat but with great loss of life and bereft of sails and steam power. The exact death toll seems unknown but was probably around 200. Cooper and his family were transferred to the Kilby where they experienced a painful shortage of food (consisting mostly of "Indian" corn) and drinking water. Most of the surviving soldiers were rescued later by other ships. The survivors on the Kilby were tranferred again to the Lucy Thomson and subsequently landed back in New York. Cooper's account of his expereinces is heavy on relgious reflection including at one point a strong criticism of Catholicsm (the religion of many of the soldiers on the San Francisco). We don't know what Cooper did with the rest of his life. Very Good. Item #95851
Price: $375.00