San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists. Volume 1.

Colma, California: San Francisco Historic Record & Genealogy Bulletin, 1965 First edition. xvi, 273pp. 3 plates from old photographs, including a folding frontis. Black cloth, gilt. A very fine copy. Lacking dust jacket. Volume I in a series of four volumes which list the names of passengers arriving in San Francisco from 1850 to 1875. This volume covers ship arrivals primarily of the 1850's but includes a number of ships arriving in the early 1860's. This is an extremely important volume as it is the only reference of its kind. The official government records were destroyed by fire. Louis Rasmussen reconstructed the arrivals from numerous contemporary sources such as newspaper lists, journals, etc. It lists the ships alphabetically with their date of arrival, statistics and list of passengers. Includes passenger names, subjects, and geographical indexes. Beyond the passenger lists, this important work covers tonnage of steam vessels, sail and towing boats sailing to and from San Francisco, distances to foreign ports from San Francisco, sailing directions for entering the port of San Francisco in 1851, steam lines upon the Pacific, steamboat routes in California, average Clipper passage time, vessels carrying Chinese passengers to San Francisco in the 1850's, scuttled and buried vessels on the San Francisco waterfront, etc..