Sailboat

 

When we think of Mormon pioneers, the image that generally comes to mind is oxcarts and handcarts. But many early converts began their westward journey with a trip over water. February 4, 1846 – which happens to be the same day the builders of Nauvoo were driven out – 238 men, women and children boarded the three-masted sailing ship Brooklyn in New York harbor. A 24,000-mile sea voyage lay before them, around Cape Horn and north to San Francisco, which at the time was called Yerba Buena. They endured extreme weather, both tropical and antarctic. They suffered from storms and sickness. They shared unbelievably cramped quarters with crates of chickens, two cows and forty pigs. But they landed in California months before the overland pioneers arrived in what would become Salt Lake. And for a time (until the gold rush changed everything) most of the settlers in California were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.