Page:California Historical Society Quarterly vol 22.djvu/164

 and the steamer was towed into position immediately above skids which previously had been arranged on the dock floor. When the tide receded, the boat dropped quietly into place on the elevated skids and was left high and dry for any necessary repairs. At low water, the dock gates were closed against the next tide, and overhauling could proceed at leisure. When she was again ready for service, the gates were reopened. The inrushing water of the flood tide raised her from the skids, and she was backed out into the gulf ready to resume her work on the river. An excellent description of the activities at Port Isabel is found in the Arizona Sentinel of 1873:

About ten miles below the mouth of the Colorado, on the Gulf of California, we entered the slough, up which we steamed three miles to Port Isabel, which is merely a wood-yard. The place was given that name from the fact that the first vessel entering that slough was the schooner Isabel. Three miles further up we came to the ship-yard of the C. S. N. Co., which is quite a village. The general buzzing of carpenters' saws, the hammerings of the blacksmiths and boiler-makers, and the clinking noise made by the coppersmith, would lead one to think himself in a much larger place. The buildings are all framed. The dock can hardly be surpassed by any on the Pacific Coast; and the convenience for workmen on this dock is far greater than on those at San Francisco. . . The Mohave will take her place next in the dock, being the last river boat to be repaired, except the Nina Tilden, the pioneer boat of this line. The Colorado was also in the dock when we got there, and had gone through a course of repairs. ..

On Tuesday. . . the steamer Colorado was launched. . . from the dock. The work did not occupy more than ten minutes, water being introduced in the dock through flood gates.120

By 1870 the Colorado Steam Navigation Company had complete monopoly of traffic on the river for the second time and was better prepared to meet the demands of commerce than at any time previously. Consequently these years are conspicuous by their absence of complaint about steam service on the Colorado. There was, however, a great need for the improvement of the ocean route from San Francisco to the mouth of the river. Such boats as the brig /. B. Ford and the schooners Isabel and Alice Haake occasionally made the trip to the mouth of the river from San Francisco in from sixteen to nineteen days. However, the Josephine in 1869 is known to have required forty-two days, and the Sovereign in 1866 spent forty-five days enroute. An average voyage required approximately from twenty to thirty days each way. Records show that vessels engaged permanently in the Colorado River trade averaged three round trips a year. However, the Isabel in 1865 and the /. B. Ford in 1867 are known to have made four. At best, the wind-driven vessels were slow and unreliable. For this reason, as has been shown, experimental voyages were made by larger oceangoing steamers— in 1859 by the Uncle Sam and Santa Cruz, in 1866 by the Oregon, and in 1869 by the Continental. By 1870 mineral production and the movement of military troops reached a volume sufficient to warrant a more regular ocean service. A year later the Colorado Steam Navigation Company purchased the 943-ton steamer Newbern,'^^'^ and on August 5 both