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Lot 341
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Woman's Ship's Log: Boston to San Francisco, Gold Rush, Slavery and More!
Woman's Ship's Log: Boston to San Francisco, Gold Rush, Slavery and More!
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Description:

Woman's Ship's Log: Boston to San Francisco, Gold Rush, Slavery and More!

This journal belonging to Helen Allyne includes observations of birds and a nearly daily record of her six-month voyage from Boston to San Francisco aboard the Golden Eagle, each day recording latitude, longitude, course, distance traveled, wind direction, air and water temperatures, and other observations, as they traveled southward in the Atlantic Ocean, around Cape Horn at the tip of South America, and northward in the Pacific Ocean. This trip was the first of eight voyages that the Golden Eagle made from the East Coast to California over the next decade. Its first captain was Samuel A. Fabens (1813-1899) of Marblehead, Massachusetts.

In California, Helen Allyne first married Captain James W. Barker of Rhode Island, and after his death, she married Josiah Stanford, one of the six Stanford brothers of New York who went to California during the Gold Rush. His younger brother Leland Stanford became Governor and U.S. Senator and founded Stanford University.

Helen Allyne's brother Joseph W. Allyne kept a daily cash book from January 1852 to August 1853, with a page or two for each month, in which he recorded details of his income and expenses. Months after the end of this record, he died tragically aboard ship in San Francisco harbor on his way to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) to improve his health, at age 25.

[SHIPS, GOLD RUSH.] Helen Maria Allyne Stanford, Manuscript Document, Journal of a Voyage from Boston to San Francisco on Board the Clipper Golden Eagle, December 1852–May 1853. Bound volume with 136 pp., 47 pp. with writing, 7.125" x 8.25". Some spine damage and cover damage; some pages torn out; very legible sepia ink on blue paper.
With:
[LEDGER, SLAVERY.] Joseph W. Allyne, Daily Cash Book, January 1852–August 1853. Bound volume with 84 pp., 35 pp. with writing, 5.5" x 7.75". Perhaps half of the pages removed from the middle of the volume; spine and cover wear;

Excerpts:
Helen Allyne Ship's Log:
"The Cape pigeons. / Franky dear, the next time I go around Cape Horn, you shall go with me and see the darling little Cape pigeons. When we got to cold weather we saw lots of these beautiful little birds their are spotted black and white and they are webfooted. You cannot think how cunning they look, running along on the water moving their little feet as fast as ever they can and then, flap their wings and fly awhile. They make a noise just like a dove, and they would follow our ship fifty or sixty miles without once stopping. I thought they must get very tired. One was caught and I had a wing and foot. I shall keep them for you to see. I look at the little foot very often and remember how cunning the little fellow looked skimming along after the ship."
Allyne here refers to the Cape petrel (also called the Cape pigeon), a common seabird of the Southern Ocean.

"The Albatross / Is a very large and handsome bird. When he spreads his wings he measures three times your height. His head is as large [as] a young child's, he is webfooted, and his feet are larger than your hands; he has a long beautiful neck, and his feathers are very elegant; his eyes are as bright as the stars; he has beside a profusion of feathers, a thick coat of down, which must keep him very warm. He has a beak as long as your hand, which curls over in the upper part, and the way they catch them is by tying a piece of pork on a hook. The Albatross bites the pork, and the hook fastens into the curled roof of his beak and so they can be drawn in without being hurt at all. We caught eight and put them into our neat hen coop where they staid half a day then they were killed and made several dinners for us.... One day while we were near the equator on the Pacific side, a darling little brown bird flew aboard the ship, and Mr. G. caught him in his hand. He seemed very tired and trembled much. We took him into the Cabin and put him in one of the ‘stern lights' where he staid two hours, then one of the passengers wrote something and tied around his neck and let him go, but the poor little bird was not enough rested to leave us, so he staid aboard nearly three days. We cut the paper from his neck for it seemed to be too weighty for him. Several times in a day he used to fly off at a little distance from the ship and then come back again, and when he was entirely rested, he left us altogether."

December 30, 1852: "Comes in fine & pleasant, at 5 a.m. sail ahead at 9 a.m. exchanged colors with her & found her to be a Brazilian ‘brig' at 1 p.m. out of sight astern."

January 20, 1853: "Comes in fine breeze & fine weather at 2 P.M. saw land bearing N. at 8 P.M. Rio light bore N.N.W. pr compass lost 62 miles, at 4 A.M. made sail & proceeded in at 5 P.M. came to anchor with small Bower & 45 fathoms of chain."

February 19, 1853, Rio de Janeiro: "Comes in fine pleasant weather. Since the last date we have been lying in port undergoing repairs on our bows. The crew have been engaged variously at ships duty."

March 27, 1853: "Comes strong gales one reef out of full & mizzen topsails & set the jib at 4 P.M.... heavy squall through out lee sail in the water during the squalls shipping large quantities of water over weather rail pumps attended every 2 hours."

May 8, 1853: "Comes in light breezes from Srd at half past 1 & took a breeze from W.S.W. middle part pleasant Ends fresh breezes."

Joseph Allyne's Cash Book:
Includes the following entries:
January 29, 1852: "Fowlers Phrenological Exam .75"
February 2, 1852: "Cash pd Subscription to AntiSlavery 1.00"
February 26, 1852: "Cash pd for Daguerotype 1.50"
April 23, 1852: "Hair Cut .25"
August 30, 1852: "Trip to Niagara & Pittsburg Convention 50.00"
The Free Soil Party held its second National Convention in Pittsburgh in August 1852 and nominated Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire as their candidate for president.
September 19, 1852: "Cash for Member F Soil Club 1.00"
November 20, 1852: "Kossuth Hat 3.00"
January 18, 1853: "Boots & over Shoes 5.75"
July 28, 1853: "Paid for Piano sent Califia 225.00"
July 29, 1853: "Charity to the Kidnapped 1.00"
This entry may refer to free African Americans who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. On January 4, 1853, Solomon Northup, a musician who had been kidnapped in Washington, D.C. and sold into slavery in 1841, regained his freedom. Later that year, he published a memoir entitled Twelve Years a Slave that brought attention to the practice.
July 30, 1853: "Present of Daguerotype 3.50"

The Golden Eagle, on which Helen Allyne traveled to California, was built at Medford, Massachusetts, and launched in 1852. It was 1,121 tons and 192 feet in length. William Lincoln of Boston owned the ship, and its captain was Samuel A. Fabens until 1858. It joined the Glidden and Williams line of San Francisco clippers and made a total of eight voyages around Cape Horn to San Francisco. On the return leg of the last of these voyages, the Golden Eagle left San Francisco and loaded a cargo of guano at Howland Island in the south Pacific. Leaving Howland Island on November 20, 1862, the Golden Eagle sailed for Cork, Ireland. On February 21, 1863, the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama attacked and burned the Golden Eagle in the mid-Atlantic, taking her crew captive.

Captain Raphael Semmes (1809-1877) of the CSS Alabama wrote of the encounter: "I had overhauled her near the termination of a long voyage. She had sailed from San Francisco, in ballast, for Howland's Island, in the Pacific; a guano island of which some adventurous Yankees had taken possession. There she had taken in a cargo of guano, for Cork.... This ship had buffeted the gales of the frozen latitudes of Cape Horn, threaded her pathway among its ice-bergs, been parched with the heats of the tropic, and drenched with the rains of the equator, to fall into the hands of her enemy, only a few hundred miles from her port. But such is the fortune of war. It seemed a pity, too, to destroy so large a cargo of a fertilizer, that would also have made fields stagger under a wealth of grain. But those fields would have been the fields of the enemy; or if it did not fertilize his fields, its sale would pour a stream of gold into his coffers; and it was my business upon the high seas, to cut off, or dry up this stream of gold."

Helen Maria Allyne Barker Stanford (1830-1909) was born in Massachusetts. In 1854, she married James W. Barker (1810-1856), and they had two children. In July 1861, she married Josiah Stanford (1817-1890), with whom she had one child. He was the older brother of industrialist, California Governor, and U.S. Senator Leland Stanford (1824-1893). They and four other brothers traveled from New York to California during the Gold Rush.

Joseph W. Allyne (1829-1854) was born in Massachusetts. He died on March 24, 1854, aboard the ship California in the harbor of San Francisco, California, on the way to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) for his health. An obituary that appeared in Frederick Douglass' Paper described him as "a young man of great probity" and "a friend of the slave, and of man everywhere, seeking after justice, and truth, and harmony."

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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