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Title: Autograph Letter Signed - 1850 ‘Lord’ George Gordon’s California Association Ship in Nicaragua Author: Foster & Manning Place: Realejo [Nicaragua] Publisher: Date: April 3, 1850 Description: 2 pp. Written to Captain J.W.Goodrich, Bark Clarissa Perkins, and signed Foster + Manning. “…our Mr. Manning’s letter to Mr. Monkhouse in answer to those of Mr. Gordon… relative to that Gent.’s wishes respecting the procuring a Cargo of Lumber for your vessel. It is entirely out of our line of business any speculation of the kind pointed out by Mr. Gordon, and although in his prior letters of October and November last, he expresses an intention of sending a vessel here to procure Cargo of Timber, states at same time very naturally that in the absence of Funds, he will procure approved Letters of Credit in good Houses in the States. However Mr. Monkhouse has presented us nothing of the kind, but on the contrary expects that we should make advances to meet Ships disbursements and expenses. However willing we may be to oblige Mr. Gordon or yourself, those circumstances places us under the necessity of declining entering in any way whatever into any spec. with respect to the Clarissa Perkins. We are truly sorry that Mr. Gordon should have commenced a voyage which must prove an unfortunate one, and we would certainly recommend your returning to San Francisco as soon as possible to avoid further loss. You will not be able to obtain any Freight from hence to California, and unless you were liberally supplied with funds, you could not compete with the many fine vessels now in Panama waiting for Passengers…”; with: James W. Goodrich, Autograph Document Signed as Master, Barque Ernestina. Montevideo, Uruguay, April 20, 1847. Statement of expenses of the vessel, including wages paid to officers and crew and the purchase of a cargo of salt. One of the most famous of early Gold Rush entrepreneurs, George Gordon (styled “Lord” though he was no British nobleman) organized a “California Association” in 1848, collecting $160 each from 200 adventurous pioneers, who were to be transported from New York to San Francisco and the gold fields beyond on a first-class sailing vessel, commanded by an experienced captain. The first band of130 left New York on February 6, 1849 aboard the Clarissa Perkins, Captain James W. Goodrich commanding, for a hair-raising 8-month voyage around the Horn. A second group, under Gordon’s own command, took a new route via Nicaragua, and “after enduring unheard-of hardships” arrived in San Francisco in October 1849, a month after Goodrich’s ship (described as an overcrowded “foul and leaky craft…scandalously unseaworthy”) reached port, “bearing a party of angry worn-out adventurers, who openly vowed that if Gordon had been there upon their arrival they would have hanged him.” Some of the passengers probably also blamed their sufferings on Captain Goodrich, though he was indeed an experienced mariner who, as the document here attests, had made earlier voyages in South American waters. Once in California, “Lord” Gordon had no reluctance about sending Goodrich and the Clarissa Perkins back to Nicaragua on the hapless trip described in this letter – hapless because Gordon’s “absence of Funds” made it impossible for Goodrich to buy a profitable cargo to carry back to San Francisco. And neither John Foster nor Thomas Manning, the British merchants who held a monopoly of Nicaraguan lumber shipments to the Pacific coast, would gamble a farthing on Gordon’s ventures. Gordon himself later became a wealthy San Francisco wheeler-dealer whose California Association misadventures were recorded in Gertrude Atherton’s first novel and a 1968 historical account of the Zamorano Club. But original manuscript material on his first Gold Rush enterprise are rarely found outside of institutional collections. Lot Amendments Condition: Lightly yellowed over time; very good. Item number: 234067