What links 19th century opium smuggling, Chinese commerce, the California Gold Rush, and Pomo Indians?
The Frolic, a cargo ship laden with exotic goods for gold-rich buyers in San Francisco and grounded off the Mendocino Coast in 1850. Off the Mendocino coast a hundred miles north of San Francisco, the Frolic went aground on July 25, 1850, along with a huge cargo of luxury goods from China imported San Francisco merchants their newly-rich Gold Rush customers. The cargo included camphor wood trunks, silks, lacquerware, marble inset tables, gold filigree jewelry, brass weights, tortoiseshell combs, 21,000 porcelain bowls, and a whole prefabricated house with oyster shell windows. The only cargo that was not from China was 6,109 bottles of Edinburgh ale for thirsty gold miners! The fascinating web of relationships embodied in the wreck and salvage of this ship is described in Tom Layton s recent book, The Voyage of the Frolic: New England Merchants and the Opium Trade (Stanford University Press, 1997). In May, 1998 CHCP co-sponsored a slide lecture by author Layton, a leading California ar
