Carleton Watkins “Ho! For California!”
August, with at least one stop en route in Callao, Peru, arriving in Panama City on 2 or 3 September. The Chili and Peru were the very first steam-powered vessels put into service on the entire Pacific coast of South America. They were operated by the Pacific Steam Navigation Company (P.S.N.C.) with headquarters in Valparaíso. [10] The P.S.N.C. schedule was coordinated with the arrivals and departures of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (P.M.S.C.) vessels operating between Panama City and San Francisco. Collis Huntington’s trans-isthmus freight logistics business (see Chapter Six) enabled secure transport of the U. S. Mail across the isthmus after its arrival from the east coast at Chagres, Nueva Granada. Carleton’s association with mail transfer on the isthmus would have connected him with the P.M.S.C. managers in Panama City, an association that could have qualified both men to travel as “crew,” and, in this capacity, they would not have been recorded on the passenger list.[11] Vance and Carleton probably spent up to a week in Panama City in order to have at least one day without rain to secure three daguerreotype views (R.V. nos. 105, 106, 107).[12]
From the two months Carleton spent on the isthmus in 1849, he would have been familiar with the most interesting sites in Panama City and thus able to choose the best viewpoints. In his catalog, Vance used the word “Panoramic” to describe view no. 105, by which he could have meant a multi-part sequence made by rotating the camera to widen the field of vision when the incremental segments were positioned side-by-side. Carleton later made this type of multi-part segmented panorama a personal specialty.[13]
The two men are believed to have boarded the ship Panama in Panama City on September 2 or 3, arriving in San Francisco nineteen days later on Sunday, September 22, 1850, with stops in Acapulco, Mazatlan, and Monterey.[14]
One overriding question is this: When did the grand plan to create a series of Daguereotype Views in California become a formally articulated project? It surely did not happen before leaving Chile, but could have been conceived either en route to San Francisco or after arriving in California. It could have been that the five[15] daguerreotypes made en route to California
[10] John Haskell Kemble, “The Genesis of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company,” California Historical Society Quarterly, XXIII (nos. 3-4), pp. 11-15.
[11] Watkins had a long history of gratis transportation according to Charles B. Turrill, “An Early California Photographer,” News Notes of California Libraries, 13 (no. 1, Jan. 1918), p. 34. Also relevant is Carleton’s later association with P.M.S.C. as a service provider in San Francisco (see C.M.P. nos. 330-337.
[12] The month of September in Panama City typically brings 21 days of rain according to www.weather-and-climate.com.
[13] Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs, nos. 57, 66, 90-92,260-262, 360-364, 365-368, 369-372, 375-377, 434-436, 882-884. The same method was employed for stereographs: 169-181, 762-770,1201-1209, 1214-1218, 1338-1355 (made before 1873).
[14] Louis J. Rasmussen, San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists, Vol. II, Colma, California: San Francisco Historical Records, [1966], p. 40.
[15] No. 108 was probably purchased from another photographer since there would not have been enough time on the brief steamer stop in Callao, Peru, to travel more than six hundred miles from Callao to Cuzco.