Gerlach article part 2/
Herbert Fitch was a professional photographer who specialized in taking photos of San Diego’s harbors and beaches and, especially its ships and boats. Fitch was prolific and took thousands of photographs over his 50-year career. While nominally a photographer, Fitch was essentially a visual historian. After he retired he tried to sell his collection but had difficulty in finding a buyer and in desperation offered to give his life’s work to his physician. John Forward, his wife and five children moved from Pittsburgh to San Diego in 1886. Forward purchased the Reed and Burt Title and Abstract company and incorporated the family business as the Union Title and Trust Company. In 1946, Frank Forward, John’s brother, directed the family company to purchase all of Fitch’s photographs as the foundation of a historical photography collection that would ultimately include 140,600 images. The Forwards sold the family business to the Title Insurance and Trust Company in 1957. In 1979, the Title Insurance and Trust Company donated the entire collection of images to the San Diego History Center creating a rare visual history of a particular city in the United States. It’s likely that most if not all the photos of the abalone junks of La Playa, except for Kelsey’s, can be attributed to Fitch.
Abalone junk fleet, 1889, Herbert R. Fitch, Title Insurance and Trust Co, CHSSC.
Abalone are large mollusks with ear-shaped shells colorfully lined with iridescent mother of pearl. It exists along the coast of China where its dried meat is an expensive delicacy. Seven species are present in California. One, the black abalone, is unique as its habitat is the intertidal and shallow subtidal zones on rocky substrates from central California southward along 450 miles (725 km) of the Pacific coast of Baja California. Much of the coastline doesn’t support black abalone as the rocky substrate it requires is discontinuous and separated by small sandy bays and large stretches of sandy or cobble shoreline. Throughout its range mixed semidiurnal tides expose it twice each day between the lower high tide mark and the lowest low tide mark. Black abalone is also unique because it feeds on drift kelp torn by waves from the canopies of thick giant kelp forests that occur on rocky substrate just offshore. Both require the cool water generated by the southward flowing California Current which is driven by the persistent North Pacific High and the northwest winds that prevail along the coast during spring, summer, and fall. The location of the high, and the subsidence velocity of the air within the high, determine the strength and extent of the prevailing northwesterly winds which drive the current and determine the thickness and altitude of the persistent cloud bank over the ocean and shoreline. The Coriolis effect deflects the surface water in the current offshore and upwelling cool deep water replaces the surface water along the immediate coast. The cool water and the persistent cloud cover enable giant kelp, a perennial species, and black abalone to survive south into the tropics along a desert coastline where inland summer temperatures often reach 100 F (38 C).
Persistent cumulus cloud bank along the coasts of California and Baja California, Zoom Earth.
Northern end of black abalone range in Baja California, photo linked to Google Earth.
Southern end of black abalone range in Baja California, photo linked to Google Earth.
Giant kelp forest, Brett Seymour, US National Park Service.
Black abalone in the late 1800s were preternaturally large and abundant because their primary predators, Native Americans and sea otters, had been eliminated. Archaeologist Todd Braje and his colleagues found that the average length of black abalone on California’s Channel Islands had increased from about 3 ¼ inches (80 mm) prior to European encroachment on California to about 5 ¼ inches (130 mm) when the Chinese began harvesting them 50 years after the sea otters had been converted into fashionable hats and shawls. The Chinese of Ballast Point and La Playa discovered this abalone bonanza on the sandstone bluffs just over the point and on the rocky shores and islands along the 450 miles (725 km) of the nearly deserted Baja California coastline when they worked as cooks for the shore whalers of their Ballast Point community. They also would have learned the sailing routes and navigation practices for an area where no sextant sights are possible due to the persistent overcast sky.
Black abalone protected from harvest, Michael Ready, US National Park Service.
In China, the mid-1800s was anything but a bonanza for most. Large numbers of single men from four provinces of the Pearl River Delta area, between Hong Kong and Macau, obtained credit-tickets and left for California – Gold Mountain as they referred to the state. Michael Williams in his dissertation, Destination Qiaoxiang Pearl River Delta Villages & Pacific Ports, 1849-1949 describes these people as huaqiao, (Chinese who reside away from home) and their home as qiaoxiang (native places). Williams used those terms to focus attention on the individuals instead of nations, and to highlight the clear intent of the individual huaqiao to return to their qiaoxiang, their motivations for traveling to the US, and the vast Chinese commercial network that grew to assist the remittances of the huaqiao to their clans in their qiaoxiang. Henry Choi in his book, The Remarkable Hybrid Maritime World of Hong Kong and the West River region in the Late Quing Period, details the sophisticated and complex regulatory and tax environment for operating and owning junks (defined as native vessels), lorchas (defined as modified native vessels), and European vessels in the Pearl River Delta. Historian Linda Bentz and Braje uncovered the complex commercial network of the Chinese merchant owned and built junks operating out of Santa Barbara, California, their hiring of European vessels for transport of collectors and abalone, and their contracting with American and European steamships to transport dried abalone meat and shells to San Francisco and on to China.
The operations of the abalone junk fleet of La Playa were tri-national. The collection and drying of meat were done on the shoreline and coastal terraces of Mexico. The dried abalone meat and, starting in the 1870s, the shells, were transported by junk or by whaling schooner, to San Diego. The cargo was then shipped on steamship to San Francisco and then by steamship to China.
Drying the meat required large cauldrons to briefly boil it in seawater, imported wood or abundant driftwood for the fire under the cauldrons, and extensive arrays of wooden drying racks. It took a crew of land-based workers to do this and to protect the meat from coyotes and gulls while the skiff-based crew collected the abalone at other locations up to a day or so away and then sailed it to the land-based processing locations. It could take up to six weeks for the meat to dry. The workers needed a source of freshwater and the further south the abalone junks worked, the more arid the desert became. There are six small ephemeral streams or arroyos along the abalone coast of Baja California, none of which run outside of brief winter storms or thrice a decade extratropical hurricanes. The likely sources of water were the same as those used by earlier sea otter hunters and shore whalers; either shallow wells dug in the sandy deltas of the arroyos just above the high tide mark, or the springs on Isla de Cedros at the southern end of the abalone collection area. The workers and crew also needed to be fed. In 1871, the owners of the abalone junks contracted with the Packard Whaling Company, consisting of twin brother Captains Alphaeus and Prince Packard, to deliver rice and cured pork to the Chinese abalone operations at Santo Tomas and San Quintin where there were shore whaling stations. This saved the abalone junks from losing precious time sailing back to San Diego for provisions during their seasonal collections and provided the shore whalers income during their off season.
Abalone drying racks in Baja California, built by later Japanese abalone fisherman, unknown source.
Baja California Norte, 1884.
By 1876 the gray whale had been driven to the brink of extinction, whaling ceased, and Captain Alphaeus Packard became a farmer. In his 1874 tome, Marine Mammals of the North-western Coast of North America, Charles Scammon, a famous shore whaler who the lagoon across from Isla de Cedros was named after, noted that the daily sighting of gray whales on their December southward migration to Baja California was 1,000 per day and by the early 1870s had dropped to 40 per day according to one of the Captains Packard of Ballast Point. Scammon described the whaling schooners as either cruising the shore during the day and standing off at night or as anchored just beyond the kelp off islands, points, and capes “rolling and surging in the ugly ground swell.” The whaling season at Scammon’s Lagoon was from December through March when the cows with their calves were hunted inside the lagoon. This is the peak time when eastward moving Pacific storms would make landfall, usually in California, but sometimes south into Baja California. In his book, Scammon described his experience of being ship bound one March, low on freshwater and driftwood, while anchored off the main watering place on Isla de Cedros, and enduring a three-week gale and heavy seas that made it too dangerous to land a boat.
Isla Cedros primary anchorage and watering site, drone photo linked to Google Earth.
Today, cruisers sailing south from southern California along the coast of Baja California wait until November to depart to avoid the risk of hurricanes and to avoid the winter gales that Scammon encountered. It is a downwind run with the relatively slow California Current. In contrast, heading north is done in July, November, and December and is referred to as the Baja Bash because it is upwind and into wind chop and swell. May, June, and July are the peak months for cold water upwelling, fog and northwest winds, and a weak, near-coast, northward-flowing counter current develops along Baja California. The sailing route from Isla de Cedros is a northeast slant to Isla San Jeronimo just off the coast, and then day sailing from anchorage to anchorage, sheltering from the northwest winds and wind swell behind capes and in small coves. From July through October those anchorages can experience large southern swells from northwestward tracking hurricanes far to the south.
The abalone junks of La Playa had to contend with a wide variety of weather from Isla de Cedros to San Diego during the harvest season which, from newspaper accounts of their sailing, appears to have begun in early May. They would periodically need to beat up the coast of Baja California to San Diego to deliver a heavy cargo of dried meat and shells so they needed to be able to set a lot of canvas, sail fairly close to the wind with minimal leeway, and have heavy ground tackle for anchoring in exposed areas. Today’s sailors on boats with fin keels and spade rudders know how easily their boats are stopped by kelp forests or patches of drift kelp and how difficult it is to disentangle the kelp from the rudder stock. This was likely a consideration for the builders of the La Playa abalone junks. Antifouling bottom paint didn’t exist so the junks had to be built to take the stress of periodic careening to have their bottoms scrubbed. Fortunately, the teredo wouldn’t be introduced to the Pacific Coast of North America until 1913. Unfortunately, there are no first-hand accounts of the design and construction of the junks and what has been reported in various reports does not match the photographs of the junks they are describing. So, the photographs are the only accurate record of the junks.
The junk in Kelsey’s photo is referred to as the Sun Yun Lee although there is no way to know if that is correct. The hull is clearly double-ended and is about one foot (30 cm) shy of being fully loaded. The top of the rudder is level with the fully loaded fouling line and does not appear to have fenestrations. The position of the tiller and rudder stock indicates that the rudder is fully down (if it could be raised and isn’t fixed) and the junk’s location over the shallow bottom next to the barrier sandbar off La Playa suggests that the rudder does not project below the bottom of the hull. Together with the need for beating back against the prevailing northwest wind, this means that the junk must have a keel to resist leeway. There are two large fisherman anchors at the catheads and a capstan aft of the foremast. There don’t appear to be traditional Chinese windlasses on deck to raise the sails. The capstan indicates that the junk uses anchor chain in addition to the large coils of hemp anchor cable on deck and that the capstan is also used to hoist the sails. The mainsail has a set of shrouds directly outboard and a set aft of the mast. Both are tensioned using deadeyes and block and tackle. There is a single sheet and a unique lazyjack set up with four independent pairs of lines. A single larger pair takes the bulk of the weight of the reefed sail while three lighter pairs gather the sail as the panels are dropped. The main halyard is coiled and belayed on the port forward shroud. The foresail, set on a forward raking mast with a tack hauling parrel, is rigged similarly but with only one set of shrouds and three lazy jacks. The mizzen is set in a tabernacle, has two sheets, one set of shrouds, and does not appear to be reefable. A large bundle of oars for the skiffs is on deck.
The seven junks anchored off the steam ship wharf are of several different designs although all are double-ended. Four have three masts, and the rest have two masts. The two junks on the left side of the photo each have an approximately 12-foot-long (3.7 m) light spar of unknown purpose, perhaps for signal flags, extending from their foremasts. The junk in the foreground is fully loaded and the others are variously loaded. None of their rudders appear to be raised and three or four have rudder stocks ending high above their decks allowing their rudders to be lowered approximately four feet (1.2 m) to reduce leeway. That suggests that they don’t have keels while the rest do. The stern platforms show three or four variations.
Photos of two smaller and very similar two-masted junks moored off the wharves appear to show the type of junk used locally to catch fish. The loaded junk’s two fisherman anchors of different size are secured at the catheads and it is moored with chain, likely to a mooring buoy. It has a wooden barrel and fishing net loaded on its stern platform and the cover of its midship hold is propped up on deck. The other has been stripped of all but essential gear and has a traditional Chinese windlass on its foredeck. The stern of its skiff shows the flared side planking that is common for the Chinese skiffs of California. The rigging of the sails of both junks is the same as that of the seven larger junks.
Moored junk, no date, Title Insurance and Trust Co, San Diego Historical Society.
Moored junk, no date, US National Archives, CHSSC.
Surprisingly, despite the requirement for a customs certificate each time a junk entered the Port of San Diego and an annual fee for each junk fishing in Mexican waters, despite the fact that the junks in the 1880s transferred their cargos to steamships at the wharf where the customs office was located, despite the fact that the transfer process was adjacent to the city center, and despite the fact that photographers were actively photographing the junks, there are no firsthand records of how many abalone junks were based out of San Diego other than those depicted in the photographs and the five, four of which were likely in the photo of the group of seven, that were admeasured for registration as US vessels when they were sold in 1892. Similarly, the data for the amount of meat and shells collected in Baja California and shipped from San Diego to San Francisco is either missing or patently inaccurate. A 1879 fisheries report by Goode reported large exports from San Diego but that report was very hostile to Chinese for “stripping” the Baja California coast of abalone from the border to Isla de Cedros. The reported exports were described as estimates without information about how they were estimated, and the date of the report was before the large expansion of the abalone junk fleet to collect in the same area that they had supposedly already stripped bare.
The abalone junks of La Playa were owned by two wealthy Chinese businessmen, Quan Sun Kee and Wo Sing, who knew how to navigate currency exchange rates and oppressive customs and immigration regulations, and had access to an established trading network that reached back to the Pearl River Delta. Both were well respected in San Diego by their European peers. They also appeared to occasionally partner with San Francisco based Chinese businessmen, likely members of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (Six Companies), that represented the same districts in the Pearl River Delta that Quan Sun Kee and Wo Sing had departed from.
Mexico was actively recruiting Chinese settlers in the 1880s at the same time the US was excluding, discouraging, or deporting huaqiao. Mexico was also using foreign companies to help develop and settle northern Mexico (Robert Chao Romero, The Chinese in Mexico 1882-1940). The US owned International Company of Mexico negotiated the transfer of ownership to itself of 16,000,000 acres (6,500,000 Ha) of land in Baja California including the fishing rights all the way to Isla de Cedros. In 1888, it was making grossly exaggerated claims about the development potential of Baja California to stave off bankruptcy and it took advantage of a small gold discovery and a series of years with far above normal precipitation to close a deal with a British company to purchase its assets. The British company, the Mexican Land and Colonization Company, focused its efforts on a gold mine in the mountains and a wheat farming settlement at Bahia San Quintin in Baja California.
Prior to the sale, the American company transferred the fishing concession to Manuel and Salvador Salorio who had helped with the company’s business efforts. Enticed by the gold discovery, the On Yick Company of San Francisco purchased a half interest in a mining concession and became partners with the Salorio brothers in the fishing concession. The On Yick Company was a syndicate of the Yee Chong Long Company and the Sun Chong Yueng Company. Woo Moo Sing of the Sun Chong Yueng Company, likely the San Diego businessman and abalone junk owner, Wo Sing, was to manage the operations from Ensenada, Baja California. On June 1, 1889, the junk Kung Lee, likely owned by the other San Diego businessman, Quan Sun Kee, and described as part of the Yee Chong Long Company, left San Diego for Baja California and another junk was to follow in a couple weeks. By 1890, the British Company had built the bed of a rail line for the settlers at San Quintin with a dyke for the railway across the lagoon to reach a proposed abalone processing plant at the mouth of the bay.
It is likely, because the junks ordinarily would have been moored off La Playa, that Fitch’s 1889 photo of the seven junks moored off the wharf and Kelsey’s photo of the Sun Yun Lee were taken just before the abalone junk fleet was to permanently depart for Baja California. The fleet also may have included three or four junks from the Channel Islands fleet as newspaper reports of their operations greatly declined in the 1880s.
The British company hired Buchanan Scott to run its operations. In his article The British are Coming Donald Chaput described Scott:
Buchanan Scott, a native of Scotland, was a graduate of the Royal Military Academy and entered India service in 1871. He was an officer of engineers specializing in railroads; he surveyed and organized rail construction in the Punjab and other northern India locations. Scott was also a veteran of the Afghan War, where he was in charge of transportation and supplies. His experience and reputation were such that by 1887 he was Deputy Consulting Engineer for Railways in the government of British India. Scott was a Captain in the Royal Engineers, and a Companion in the Order of the Indian Empire when in 1888 he was selected to head the operations in Lower California.
Scott’s first year in Lower California was a near miracle. Mexican, United States, and English accounts agree that Scott brought forth order from chaos. He paid most of the old International Company debts, pushed surveys, construction, and colonization as much as he could, did his best to secure clear title to various disputed lands, and in general gave the London firm credibility. The Lower Californian praised him as “far superior to any manager the company has had.”
Scott was perhaps a little too enthusiastic. In 1890, Scott pledged $100,000 to a group of American filibusteros, literally pirates, to kidnap the governor of Baja California and take possession of Baja California. Their plan included smuggling Gatling guns and field cannons into Baja California and bribing officers in the Mexican Army. Scott also promised two British steamships to control the port of Ensenada and suggested that the filibusteros take control of a Mexican warship to provide naval support. On May 21, 1890, the San Diego Union ran an article entitle Filibusters Frustrated: Exposé of a Rattle-Brained Scheme to Capture Lower California. Apparently the pirates had loose lips. Scott was fired.
It isn’t clear how the Chinese fishing concession partnership was affected by the Scott debacle but four of the abalone junks were brought back to La Playa and two junks were built in 1891. That was very bad timing because in 1882, the US passed the Geary Act which barred Chinese fishermen from reentering the US.
1882 was eventful. Wo Sing sold the Acme, 45 ft by 12 ft (13.7 m by 3.7 m), and the Sing Wo On which was renamed Alta, 41 ft by 13 ft (12.5 m by 4 m). Quong Sun Kee sold the Sun Yun Lee which was renamed Hong Kong, 52 ft by 16 ft (15.9 m by 4.9 m). One other junk built in 1884 was sold and renamed the Peking, 52 ft by 16 ft (15.9 m by 4.9 m), and one built in 1891 was sold and renamed Chromo, 40 ft by 11 ft (12.2 m by 3.4 m).
Photo of two junks, possibly during the admeasurement process upon their sale in 1892, Note the cleared deck and the jury-rigged lifelines, US National Park Service.
The Acme ranged far south into Baja California poaching guano from small desert islands for San Diego’s burgeoning lemon industry and gathering goatskins on Isla Guadalupe 150 miles (240 km) off the coast of Baja California. Acme also sailed in the Channel Islands, primarily transporting sheep, up to 150 at a time, from San Miguel Island to the coast. The Acme lost its rudder leaving Isla San Jeronimo, Baja California, with a load of guano and was wrecked on the rocks on February 5, 1901.
The Alta and Peking also entered the guano poaching trade.
The Chromo became the most notorious. Its captain William Gerald and his crew were frequently arrested for unloading after customs hours, poaching guano, stealing abalone meat and shells from Chinese fishermen in the Channel Islands, and smuggling Chinese into the US. The Chromo capsized off Goleta, California, during a winter storm with a large deck load of lumber and was lost on November 13, 1895.
The Hong Kong, the Sun Yun Lee that Nash and others so admired, returned to Isla de Cedros at least once to collect abalone meat and shells, but mostly was a guano poacher. It was seized by the Mexican man-of-war Democrata off Isla Adelaida, and towed back to Ensenada where her crew was jailed for 18 months. In December 1900, while the crew was in jail, the anchored junk was driven on the beach and wrecked by a fierce winter storm.
The last surviving La Playa junk, probably 1910, likely the Hazel. Title Insurance and Trust, San Diego Historical Society.
The author, his dad, and a fellow Sabot sailor friend off La Playa at almost the exact same spot where Kelsey took his photograph of the Sun Yun Lee.
The author at the tiller of the Grace Quan.
The author scuba diving at Whalers Cove where Chinese first harvested abalone in California.
Dedicated to two of my grandkids, Isla and Makai, and their Pearl River Delta ancestors.
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