San Joaquin Republican Extra! By Telegraph…Arrival of P.M.S.S. Co.‘s Steamship Golden Gate! [California newspaper broadside extra]

Gold Rush-era 1854 newspaper extra with fresh news of the Kansas-Nebraska Act

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June 14, 1854 California newspaper broadside extra announcing the arrival in San Francisco of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s steamer Golden Gate with fresh news from New York and the Continent.

The P.M.S.S. Co.‘s steamer Golden Gate, was telegraphed outside the Heads at half past 2 o’clock this afternoon. We are indebted to Adams & Co. for furnishing our reporter with files of New York papers before the steamer arrived at the wharf.

By 4PM that afternoon, the San Joaquin Republican, a daily newspaper in Stockton, San Joaquin County, had issued this newspaper extra. Leading news stories, datelined San Francisco, included the resignation from the U.S. Senate of Edward Everett of Massachsetts, “angry debate” in the U.S. House of Representatives over the Kansas–Nebraska Act, and much news of domestic disasters including shipwrecks and fires.

Unbeknownst to Californians that day, the controversial Kansas–Nebraska Act had already been signed into law by President Franklin Pierce on May 30.

Other domestic news concerns “[t]he Pacific Railroad bill;” the British seizure of the American whale ship Hudson at the Falkland Islands; an explosion at a coal pit near Richmond, Virginia; the destruction by fire of the Imlay Mills at Hartford, Connecticut; cholera on the Mississippi; and the wreck of the ship Winchester of Boston:

The ship Winchester, of Boston, Captain More, while on a voyage from Liverpool homeward, with an assorted cargo and 700 passengers, was overtaken by a gale on 17th of April, and completely wrecked. Some of the crew were lost. A portion of the passengers were taken off by other vessels before falling in with the steamship Washington, which happened on the 2d May. The ship remained in distress for over two weeks.

A separate section—“The Very Latest”—featured foreign news datelined from Paris, Bucharest, Constantinople, and Berlin. These stories report on American shipping, the political situation in Europe, and news of the Crimean War. The latter includes the bombardment of Odessa on the Black Sea, the capture of 13 “Russian ships laden with munitions of war,” and the allied bombing of “[t]he Russian batteries at the Sulina mouth of the Danube.”

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s 2,067-ton steamer Golden Gate was built in 1851. It burned at sea in 1862 and was beached near Manzanillo, Mexico; 223 people lost their lives in the disaster.¹

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