Mormon Pioneers - The Ship Brooklyn

The Ship Brooklyn

In November 1845 Samuel Brannan, newspaper man and small publisher of the Mormon paper The Prophet (later the New York Messenger), was directed by church elders to charter a ship that would carry its passengers away from the eastern United States to California, which was then part of Mexico. Over the course of two months, Brannan managed to recruit 70 men, 68 women, and 100 children - 238 persons total. Brannan negotiated a fare of $75 for adults and half-fare for children with the Captain Abel W. Richardson, master and a principal owner of the ship Brooklyn.

On the 4th of February, 1846, (the same day as the Mormon Nauvoo exodus began) the ship Brooklyn cleared New York harbor and began its nearly 6 months voyage to the Pacific coast of the then Mexican Territory of California. The ship weighed 445 short tons (404 t) and measured 125 ft x 28 ft x 14 ft (38.1 m x 8.5 m x 4.3 m) and was built in 1834 by Joseph H. Russell at Newcastle, Maine.

The voyage would be the longest passage made by a Mormon emigrant company. The ship Brooklyn sailed from Brooklyn Harbor, New York and traveled south across the Atlantic equator, around Cape Horn, stopping at the Juan Fernández Islands, then to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), finally docking permanently in Yerba Buena (San Francisco) on July 29, 1846 having made the sea voyage in five months and twenty-seven days.

Augusta Joyce Crocheron, a passenger on the ship Brooklyn, describes the voyage:

As for the pleasure of the trip, we met disappointment, for we once lay becalmed in the tropics, and at another time we were "hatched below" during a terrific storm. Women and children were at night lashed to their berths, for in no other way could they keep in. Furniture rolled back and forth endangering limb and life. The waves swept the deck and even reached the staterooms.... Children's voices were crying in the darkness, mother's voices soothing or scolding, men's voices rising above the others, all mingled with the distressing groans and cries of the sick for help, and, above all, the roaring of the wind and howling of the tempest made a scene and feeling indescribable.

The passengers of the ship Brooklyn left the United States with the hope of finding religious freedom. When they arrived in San Francisco however, they were informed that they were in the United States of America. Despite the tensions that drove them from their homes in the Eastern States, the crew and passengers "felt more cheerful and secure." Mormon historian B. H. Roberts noted in his work A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

On the announcement of the United States naval officer, who boarded the Brooklyn as she came to anchor, that the emigrants "were in the United States of America," three hearty cheers were given in reply. The officer was Captain Montgomery of the United States war sloop Portsmouth; he was then in command of Yerba Buena and the surrounding country. Three weeks previous to the arrival of the saints, the United States flag had been raised and the country taken possession of in the name of the government which the flag represented.

This dangerous trek of nearly 24,000 miles (39,000 km) would claim 10 lives of the ship's 238 passengers, nine of whom were buried at sea.