If you were curious about the voyage of the sailing ship
Brooklyn – I certainly was – here’s a little more of the story: Eleven
passengers and one crewman perished during the trip. They’d hoped for fresh
milk along the way, but the cows they brought didn’t last long. Both were
killed during the first violent storm. They’d planned to stop for fresh food
and water at Valparaiso, Chile, but were prevented by another storm. Instead, they
paused at the Juan Fernández Islands, where Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
was set. They passed the long hours reading 179 volumes of the Harper’s Family
Library. When they arrived in California, they nearly tripled the size of the
town that would become San Francisco. Theirs was the first wheat crop in the
area, the first school, bank, library, post office and newspaper. The journey
of the Brooklyn is believed to be the longest religious sea pilgrimage in
recorded history.
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