No baggage was allowed to go on shore except bags
or parcels carried in the hands of passengers. At times the fog
lifted so that we could see from the wreck the tops of the hills,
and the outline of the shore; and I remember sitting on, the upper
or hurricane deck with the captain, who had his maps and compass
before him, and was trying to make out where the ship was. I
thought I recognized the outline of the hills below the mission of
Dolores, and so stated to him; but he called my attention to the
fact that the general line of hills bore northwest, whereas the
coast south of San Francisco bears due north and south. He
therefore concluded that the ship had overrun her reckoning, and
was then to the north of San Francisco. He also explained that,
the passage up being longer than usual, viz., eighteen days, the
coal was short; that at the time the firemen were using some cut-up
spars along with the slack of coal, and that this fuel had made
more than usual steam, so that the ship must have glided along
faster than reckoned. This proved to be the actual case, for, in
fact, the steamship Lewis was wrecked April 9, 1853, on "Duckworth
Reef," Baulinas Bay, about eighteen miles above the entrance to San
Francisco.
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