cams_hparker_2311_f003_012_2

Since I last wrote you, this coast has again been
the scene of a large number of melancholy disasters

The most shocking one of all occurred the 15th inst
at which time the boiler of the Steamer "Secretary"
exploded, killing instantly about thirty persons and
badly scalding and mangling a large number besides
among which number were several ladies.

At about the same time the Steamer "Gazelle"
plying on the Columbia river in Oregon exploded
her boiler instantly killing twenty persons.

Within the past week two schooners one bark and
a clipper ship have been wrecked at only a short
distance from this city. With one exception no
deaths have been caused by these shipwrecks, but
this one instance has occasioned a frightful loss
of Life, as you will see by the following --

The bark Walter Claxton left Mendocino (a port
sixty miles north of San Francisco) loaded with lumber
having on board beside several passengers, which
with the crew of the vessel amounted to sixteen persons

Soon after leaving port, she encountered a severe
gale which caused her to capsize, when those on
board of her managed to get onto her bottom, but
the heavy sea soon washed these off and as yet
only four or five out of the sixteen have been
found and probably never will be. The clipper
ship "Golden Fleece" of Boston got ashore last Saturday
when going out of this port, at a place called Fort Point

[written upside down and backward in the top margin]
she will write me a good long letter too. It is now just a month
since I wrote her that I should like to have her send me her
miniature and in six weeks or two months more I shall expect to recieve [receive] it