Panama 1848 (paddle steamer)

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Panama 1848 (paddle steamer)

Post by shipstamps » Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:51 am

Four stamps have been issued by the Canal Zone Post Office to commemorate the gold rush to California, across the Isthmus of Panama, in 1849.
A sawmill labourer, James W. Marshall, while working one day in January 1848 at the tail race of Sutter's Mill, on the American River, California, found gold deposits. He tried to keep the discovery secret, but it eventually leaked out, and in May an Investigator was sent to the spot to ascertain if there was any truth in the rumours. His report caused an immediate frenzy of gold lust in every community near the spot.
In December the gold rush was commented on in an official talk by President Polk, and that started off a rush to California from every state in the Union. The report spread to Europe, and soon shiploads of prospectors were leaving European ports, bent on making easy money in the new Eldorado. The most popular route to the goldfields from the eastern seaboard lay through Panama, and in a very short time this narrow isthmus became animated by tens of thousands of American and European fortune-hunters.
Scenes from this invasion are depicted on the stamps. The 3 cents value shows a sailing ship off Chagres village, at the mouth of the Chagres River, on the Atlantic side of Panama, with a boatload of passengers going ashore. Their next step was up the Chagres River to Las Cruces, and a local flatbottomed craft, known as a bongo, was extensively used in this stage of the journey. The 6 cents stamp shows a bongo being punted by three men, one at the stern and the others on either side forward. From Las Cruces the journey to Panama had to be made on foot, with equipment conveyed by pack mule. Many perished through cholera and Chagres fever on this overland trail. Miners on the trail are shown on the 12 cents stamp.
Having arrived at Panama, the prospectors boarded ship for San Francisco. One of the early paddle-steamers engaged on this run was the side-wheeler Panama, and she is shown leaving Panama on the 18 cents stamp, illustrated above. She was a wooden, two-decked, threemasted steamer, with a length of 200ft. and a beam of 34ft. The Panama was built in New York in 1848 for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and was in regular service between Panama and San Francisco from 1848 to 1853.
The designs of the four stamps are from sketches prepared by Mr. Meade Bolton and subsequently modified by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving. While they adequately convey the idea, of contemporary drawings made during the gold rush days, I think that a good opportunity has been wasted. The stamp does not do justice to this really historic vessel, one of the first steamers to make the 17,000-mile journey from New York to San Francisco via the Straits of Magellan and Panama. Previous Canal Zone ship stamps have been first-class issues, but this one is a disappointment.
Canal Zone SG195,198
Attachments
SG195.jpg
SG198.jpg

aukepalmhof
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Re: Panama 1848 (paddle steamer)

Post by aukepalmhof » Mon Dec 11, 2017 6:57 pm

The wooden hulled cargo-passenger side-paddle steamer PANAMA was built by William H. Webb, New York for the Pacific Mail SS Co.
21 February 1848 keel laid down.
29 July 1848 launched as PANAMA.
Tonnage 1,087 ton, dim. 200.4 x 33.10 x 20.2ft.
Powered by single side lever steam engine, ?hp. speed.
Rigged as three mast bark.
Accommodation for around sixty first cabin and between 100-150 steerage passengers
November 1848 delivered. Building cost $211,356.

01 December 1848 maiden voyage from New York, five days at sea the steam engine was wrecked by a piece of wood left in the steam piping and she had to be return to New York.
18 February 1849 the PANAMA left after repair of the engine for the second time New York, with 75 passengers on board, after arriving in Panama City were 290 passengers embarked she headed north to San Francisco, where she arrived on 04 June.
Thereafter she began to operate in the service between San Francisco and Panama City.
From 1858 she was used in the service between San Francisco to the Columbia River.
1861 Sold to Holladay & Flint for local service, and in 1868 fitted out and armed with two 30pdr. Parrott Rifles and 4 – 12 pdr. long range guns as a revenue cutter and transport for the Mexican Government, commissioned in the Mexican Navy and renamed JUAREZ.
Her fate is not known.

Source: Log Book 7/83 and 10/64. American Steamships on the Atlantic by Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt.
Canal Zone 1949 18c sg 198. scott 145.

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