SS Yankee Blade

The SS Yankee Blade was a three-masted side-wheel steamship belonging to the Independent Line (a holding of Cornelius Vanderbilt). The Yankee Blade was built in 1854 to transport gold, passengers, and cargo between Panama and San Francisco, California, during the California Gold Rush. The ship wrecked in fog off of Point Arguello in Southern California on October 1, 1854. The shipwreck cost an estimated 30 to 40 lives.

As soon as the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill became known in 1848, many people wished to travel to California to mine for gold. At that time, there were three main routes for people from the eastern United States to travel to California. The first route was via overland travel, which was expensive, dangerous, and took a long time. Another route involved sailing approximately fourteen thousand miles around Cape Horn in South America. Though this way was faster and sometimes less expensive, the route was no less dangerous, as the weather in the south was often harsh and unforgiving. In addition to the dangers present on both routes, the journey by land could very often take over six months, and the sea route, though faster, could still take over three months to complete.

The third and fastest route involved sailing via steamship to Panama, hiking through the jungle on the Isthmus, and then sailing again from the coast of Panama to San Francisco. Though this route cut the time of the sea journey down to less than six weeks, the lack of ships between Panama and San Francisco could often lead to significant waiting times for passengers in Panama. It was to fill this untapped market of transportation between Panama and California that the Yankee Blade was built.

The SS Yankee Blade was built to carry gold, passengers, and cargo on the second leg of the journey between San Francisco and New York, via the Isthmus of Panama. The Yankee Blade was built as one of the most luxurious ships in the Independent Line fleet, with larger, square portholes, bathrooms, and a ship's surgeon whose services were free for the passengers. The ship was built as one of the fastest at the time, her side-lever engine, a more powerful but less efficient design over the less compact walking beam type engines, propelled the ship to a cruising speed of around thirteen knots.

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Wikipedia