Hand Written Accounts of the Operation & Life Onboard Steamships of the Pacific Mail Company: The S.S. Atlantic, Golden City, Constitution and Champion,1857-1866

A Logbook Diary, 1876-1894

Letter of Passengers Recognition of Service

Direct from the hand of Captain Oliver Eldridge comes exceptional written accounts of the last half of the 19th century while he commanded passenger steamships along the Atlantic seaboard. Recorded journeys include a charter as a troop transport for the north during the American Civil War, travel via Panama to California, and Transatlantic crossings.

Eldridge's penmanship is exceptionally clear and stylized, yet it is the content's wealth of important information which provides these artifacts with their greatest value to any student of American maritime and naval history. Beyond keeping the necessary ritual of recording the weather, location and activity to maintain his vessels, Eldridge writes beyond the predictable to add eyewitness accounts and his personal notes of the activities of his ships and life around him.

While his ship, the S.S. ATLANTIC, is under charter to the United States government as a troop transport and escort ship during the early days of the American Civil War, it served as the flagship for General Sherman and an extremely large flotilla of famous steam and sail transports, scouts and warships. The ATLANTIC escorted the iron-clad MONITOR as well. Eldridge records extensive news from the front lines as it is received, especially of important naval battles.

Historically, ship captains are almost universally stereotyped as hard, cruel leaders, holding an iron command to maintain order and discipline. Eldridge's comments expose his true compassion and concern for the passengers, crew, and always the ship in his responsibility. The difficulties of life at sea combined with the realities of war resound within his words which mark the lives lost as well as the victories celebrated.

The events of Eldridge's California passage with his family onboard, complete with the different class accommodations and the great variety of people journeying to California in the 1800s tell a multitude of adventures without convenient conclusions, just the chance coming together of a passage onboard Eldridge's steamship. Spanning decades, much of the journals remains unread, with much surely to be uncovered. The later log book-diary, for instance, records Eldridge's meeting with President Grant and of his appointment to the Board of Visitors for the examination of the cadets at the Naval Academy. He journeys from San Francisco in 1876, where the first log leaves him in 1866.