Between the late 1880s and the early 1930s mail was delivered to my grandparents home here at the Macdonald ranch simply by addressing their name and Albion, Calif. On an envelope. The letter arrived via the railroad, a line that eventually ran as far as Anderson Valley. Its eastern terminus being Christine Landing, essentially the flat stretch above and slightly east of Gschwend Road.
The mail arrived in Albion via steamers and before that sailing schooners. For most of the 1870s the mail run from San Francisco to the Mendocino Coast was serviced by the Monterey, a steamer owned by the Pacific Coast Steam Ship Company (P.C.S.S.) with headquarters on Beale Street in San Francisco. The P.C.S.S. shipped everything from vegetables to coal up and down the west coast and conveyed paying passengers from port to port.
Among the company's ownership team was George Clement Perkins, fourteenth governor of California (1880-1883) and a U.S. Senator from the golden state (1893-1915). He has long been represented in our county seat, with the major east-west street named for him.
In May, 1880, the P.C.S.S. Co.'s steamship Monterey, under command of Captain John von Helms, left San Francisco at 4 p.m., Monday the 17th, bound for Mendocino and other ports, including Shelter Cove. A fresh gale from the northwest was blowing, so, with a clear sky above, von Helms attempted to avoid the heavier seas and wind by making course closer than usual to the shoreline. Late that night he left the wheel in command of the second mate and retired to his cabin. Fairly soon the ocean turned unusually rough, running in long, heavy swells. About 3 a.m. Tuesday morning, the Monterey struck heavily on a rock in seas approximately three miles south of Fort Ross and a half mile from land.
The blow stove a large hole amidship in the vessel's bottom. The captain immediately returned on deck and headed her for the nearest beach in an effort to save the passengers and crew. He got her as far as a rocky reef a hawser's length from shore, where the Monterey stuck and moved no more.
As one would presume something between excitement and panic ensued among the passengers. Captain von Helms, a veteran of many voyages, apparently retained his calm, directing both crew and passengers, thus avoiding the type of mass confusion often associated with such situations.
A life raft was lowered and five female passengers were assisted by crew onto the raft then into one of the “surf” boats. The steamer possessed three of these. Group by group all of the ship's passengers were safely off-loaded in this way. A rope was stretched between the Monterey's bow and shore, with a few items from the deck, including the mail, bundled together and fastened to the rope so they could slide to safety on land.
The ship lay broadside to shore, nearly perpendicular to the sea, in fourteen feet of water, when the last bit of salvageable luggage was trundled ashore at daybreak. Passengers were conveyed to Fort Ross where the telegraph was made use of in order to summon assistance from San Francisco as well as to notify family and friends of the shipwrecked passengers.
A strong wind continued throughout the day (Tuesday, May 18) and all hope of rescuing the cargo from the rough seas was abandoned. The steamer Newport was sent out by the P.C.S.S. to render assistance. She gathered the more than two dozen passengers at Fort Ross at 2 p.m. Wednesday and landed them at Point Arena and Navarro (often spelled Navarra at the time). The mail that usually traveled via the steamer was sent by way of stagecoach in the following weeks.
The passengers of the Monterey were comparatively lucky. P.C.S.S. steamers suffered some of the most tragic of naval consequences. The P.C.S.S. owned Valencia sunk off the southwest coast of Vancouver in the 189os with about a hundred passengers drowning.
Another bit of maritime history that involved George C. Perkins occurred in the months following the sinking of the Titanic in April, 1912. Perkins sat on the U.S. Senate board of inquiry into that most notorious of oceangoing disasters.
Lest readers be deluded into thinking Perkins a great man, it should be remembered that upon taking office as California's governor he declared March 4, 1880, a holiday for celebrating new laws that prohibited anyone of Chinese ancestry from being employed by any corporations, state, county or municipal governments.
(Nary a passenger lost at malcolmmacdonaldoutlawford.com)
I must correct myself before this goes much further. Perkins Street is named for A.T. Perkins, one of the earliest white settlers in Ukiah during the 1850s. All the other details concerning George Clement Perkins are well documented. My apologies to any descendants of A.T. Perkins out there reading that egregious misstatement. As a graduate of Ukiah High School, who traveled Perkins Street daily for years, I should have thought longer before substituting Governor Perkins for A.T.
Malcolm Macdonald