The
Pacific Mail Steamship Company was founded April 18, 1848 as a joint stock company under the laws of the State of New York by a group of New York City merchants, William H. Aspinwall, Edwin Bartlett, Henry Chauncey, Mr. Alsop, G.G. Howland and S.S. Howland. These merchants had acquired the right to transport mail under contract from the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Government from the
Isthmus of PanamaThe Isthmus of Panama, also historically known as the Isthmus of Darien, is the narrow strip of land that lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, linking North and South America. It was formed some 3 million years ago during the Pliocene epoch. It contains the country of Panama and...
to
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
awarded in 1847 to one Arnold Harris.
The company initially believed it would be transporting agricultural goods from the West Coast, but just as operations began, gold was discovered in California, and business boomed almost from the start.
The
Pacific Mail Steamship Company was founded April 18, 1848 as a joint stock company under the laws of the State of New York by a group of New York City merchants, William H. Aspinwall, Edwin Bartlett, Henry Chauncey, Mr. Alsop, G.G. Howland and S.S. Howland. These merchants had acquired the right to transport mail under contract from the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Government from the
Isthmus of PanamaThe Isthmus of Panama, also historically known as the Isthmus of Darien, is the narrow strip of land that lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, linking North and South America. It was formed some 3 million years ago during the Pliocene epoch. It contains the country of Panama and...
to
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
awarded in 1847 to one Arnold Harris.
The company initially believed it would be transporting agricultural goods from the West Coast, but just as operations began, gold was discovered in California, and business boomed almost from the start. During the
California Gold RushThe California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered by James Wilson Marshall at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California. News of the discovery soon spread, resulting in some 300,000 men, women, and children coming to California from the rest of the United States and...
in 1849, the company was a key mover of goods and people and played a key role in the growth of San Francisco, California.
The first three steamships constructed for Pacific Mail were the
California, the
Oregon, and the
Panama. The
Panama was sold to the Mexican government in 1868 and was renamed the
Juarez.
One of the company's steamships, acquired from an eastern company, the
Winfield ScottThe SS Winfield Scott was a sidewheel steamer that transported passengers and cargo between San Francisco, California and Panama in the early 1850s, during the California Gold Rush. After entering a heavy fog off the coast of Southern California on the evening of December 1, 1853, the ship crashed...
, ran aground on
Anacapa IslandAnacapa Island is a small volcanic island located about off the coast of Ventura, California, in Ventura County.Anacapa is part of the Channel Islands archipelago , and is part of the Channel Islands National Park. It is the smallest of the northern islands. The island is actually composed of...
in 1853.
In 1867 the company launched the first regularly scheduled trans-Pacific steamship service with a route between San Francisco, Hong Kong, and
Yokohamais the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshū. It is a major commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area....
, and extended service to Shanghai. This route led to an influx of
JapaneseThe are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries are referred to as...
and Chinese immigrants, bringing additional cultural diversity to California.
The company was a charter member of the
Dow Jones Transportation AverageThe Dow Jones Transportation Average is a U.S. stock market index of the transportation sector, and is the most widely recognized gauge of the American transportation sector...
.
In 1925 the company was purchased by
Robert DollarCaptain Robert Dollar was born in Falkirk, Scotland. He was called the “Grand Old Man” of the Pacific, and still ranks as one of Scotland's fifty historically wealthiest men. As a boy, Dollar worked in logging camps in the forests of Canada and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan...
& Co..
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