In the twelve months following, 775 vessels cleared from Atlantic ports for San Francisco, besides the rush from other countries, and nearly fifty thousand passengers scrambled ashore to dig for gold.

Crews deserted their ships, leaving them unable to go to sea again for lack of men, and in consequence a hundred of them were used as storehouses, hotels, and hospitals, or else rotted at their moorings.

Sailors by hundreds jumped from the forecastle without waiting to stow the sails or receive their wages.

Though offered as much as two hundred dollars a month to sign again, they jeered at the notion.

Of this great fleet at San Francisco in 1849, it was a lucky ship that ever left the harbor again.
It seemed as if the whole world were bound to California and almost overnight there was created the wildest, most extravagant demand for transportation known to history.