Long 1300-word Autograph Letter Signed as Captain of Brig Samuel & Edward, San Francisco, Nov. 19, 1850. 4pp.

To wealthy ship-owner J.[ones] P.[erkins] Veazie, Bangor, Maine. Smith’s ship had just arrived in San Francisco from Talcahuana, Chile, after sailing around the Horn from Bangor – his second 6-month voyage to Gold Rush California since the fall of 1849. On the first, the entire crew had deserted the ship near Sacramento because their wages had not been paid. This voyage was even more troubled. Plagued by bad weather, after the ship’s cargo of Potatoes, which should have brought $15,000 in San Francisco, had spoiled, Smith sailed into port to learn that California was plagued by a Cholera epidemic, “very bad” at Sacramento, but “worse at S.F.”, where up to 30 people were dying of the disease each day, one fatality being Veazie’s San Francisco agent. Smith could not even sell the shipment of lumber he had expected to unload at Sacramento, because “the cholera has put a stop to all kinds of business up the River…” He was thus forced to deal with an untrustworthy San Francisco merchant who attempted to “haul the wool over my eyes” in disposing of the remaining cargo and chartering the boat for a return trip to the Chilean coast, this time to Maule River (“rather a bad place to go to”) to pick up another cargo of potatoes, onions and grapes which were bringing fabulous prices in San Francisco. “I see no way but what I must lose money this time, but I am by no means discouraged and…I shall try it again if my life is spared…. this voyage is the first and I hope the last in which I have lost money for my owner…everything has worked against me…but …no use to reflect on what is past, I cannot control the elements neither can I help sickness and I thank kind providence that I am alive and for the future I shall not complain of my lot.”