User:BGinOC/SS Northerner (1850-1860)

Built by William H. Brown Shipbuilders of New York and launched in 1847, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company S.S. Northerner was an 1,102 ton, 203.6 foot long wooden side-wheel steamer with 2 decks and 3 masts.

She was intended for New York and Charleston service for Spofford, Tileston and Company. She was sent to San Francisco, arriving August 15, 1850, 16-days out of Panama with 415 passengers. After one journey to Panama for the Empire City Line, she was purchased by Pacific Mail Steamship Company in December 1850. Although she wasn’t a fast steamer, she remained on that route until May 1853, at which time she became a "spare" steamer. Traffic went both ways early in California's development. At the end of 1851, the Alta California reports that this steamer left San Francisco with 600 Eastbound passengers and $1,700,000 in gold, and Erik Heyl notes her clearing in August 1853 with $1,154,000 in gold. On January 5, 1860, northbound from San Francisco to the Columbia River and Puget Sound, she struck Blunt’s Reef, about twenty miles south of Humboldt Bay. She was breached, but lost 38 lives from the wreck (Heyl cites 32 lives lost).