The Sitka Adventure

The Sitka Adventure: Voyage To New Helvetia is first and foremost a rousing fantasy-adventure children's story. However, it is based on historical fact. In November 1847, the Sitka, California's first steamboat, set out on a history-making journey. Its owner, William Alexander Leidesdorff, a wealthy naturalized Mexican citizen and land grantee of African and Danish descent, purchased it to transport goods from his Sacramento-area farmstead to San Francisco. The boat was dismantled in Alaska and reassembled on Yerba Buena Island in the San Francisco Bay. On November 25, 1847, the Sitka embarked on its maiden voyage from San Francisco (which until January 1847, had been called Yerba Buena), bound for John Sutter's Fort, known as Nueva Helvecia in Spanish, New Helvetia in English, and later Sacramento. The Sitka and its ethnically diverse crew left San Francisco on a one-day trip, but took six days to steam up the Sacramento River to New Helvetia. The return trip took even longer. Back in San Francisco, the Sitka anchored in the Bay where a winter storm sank it. A year later, refitted as a sailboat, it transported miners to the gold fields. Despite its short-lived glory, the Sitka ushered in the era of steam navigation in California and heralded the day when steamboats would routinely ply the waterways between Sacramento and San Francisco.