The Sunshine Belt to the Orient

With the bleak weather of winter bringing the first cold rains to town this week and the remnant of a heck of a cold still playing havoc with my system, I thought I'd kick off a new winter enterprise. The winter months have always been the favorite time to head for the tropics or, if nothing else, at least get out of town for a bit of rest and relaxation so I thought this year I'd air a few travel ads. The sort of stuff a fellow without means, a real George Bailey, would hang on the walls of his drafty house to take his mind off the leaky roof, old windows, and pressures of his job. So here we go, whirl-wind tripping around the world with nothing but a trunk and a dream as our passport.

We start off on the Sunshine Belt Route from aboard one of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's steamers. Pacific Mail was founded in 1848 by a group of New York business men who had won a contract to transport mail from Panama to California from the US government. The California gold rush ushered in an era of profitability for the company and Pacific Mail played a key role in the growth of San Francisco.

In 1867 Pacific Mail began the country's first trans-Pacific steamship service between San Francisco, Hong Kong, Yokohama, and Shanghai. In 1925 Robert Dollar of the Dollar Steamship Company purchased Pacific Mail and, after Dollar was bailed out by the US government in 1938 the line became little more than an entity on paper. In 1949, after little more than a century of service, Pacific Mail Steamship Company went out of existence.

 I can't help hearing the sound of a steam whistle and envisioning black smoke curling from the stacks as the ship departs the quay and makes for open water when I see this ad. I see myself at the rail, staring out at the hills of San Francisco fading into the distance as the side-wheel churns. Ahead the mysteries of Japan or China await, behind lies an old life that'll be slowly forgotten, erased just like the fog erases the city. The gulls cry and I turn toward my cabin, leaving my memories to the Pacific's depths.