I wonder if you can help me? I am completing a book for the UK publisher's Constable about the life of a young scottish sailor who was shanghied in San Francisco in 1868, escaped from the ship and drifted, with three other members of the crew, for 30 days. They landed on the island of Malaita in the Solomons, where he lived for eight years until his rescue. His own account of his ordeal is very thin on detail of life in the port at that time. I wonder if you could point me in the direction of some good books (fiction or non-fiction) which paint a picture of San Francisco port-life of the time ? My best wishes Nigel Evans

-- Nigel Evans (nrevans@talk21.com.uk), December 27, 2001

Answers

"The Barbary Coast" by Herbert Asbury. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 1933)

"The Madams of San Francisco" by Curt Gentry. (New York: Ballentine Books, 1964)

-- John Martini (jamartini@earthlink.net), December 27, 2001.

"The Barbary Coast" by Herbert Asbury on online at: http://www.zpub.com/sf50/sf/hbtbcidx.htm

-- rp (editor@zpub.com), December 27, 2001.

Try to find a copy of "San Francisco Bay; A Pictorial Maritime History". It has many photos from the latter half of the 19th century and will give you a good idea of the appearance the waterfront at that time. Good luck-

-- Don Martinich (dutchm@dcn.davis.ca.us), December 29, 2001.

Oops! I forgot to mention the author's name for "San Francisco Bay, A Pictorial Maritime History". It's: John Haskel Kemble.

-- Don Martinich (dutchm@dcn.davis.ca.us), December 30, 2001.