Yosemite

The steamboat Yosemite operated for almost fifty years on San Francisco Bay, the Sacramento River, inland coastal waters and the lower Fraser River in British Columbia, and Puget Sound. Design Yosemite was built in 1862 at the yard of John Gunder North, in San Francisco. For a vessel built entirely of wood, Yosemite was enormous. She was 282' long after her rebuild following the 1865 boiler explosion, when 30' was added to her length., 35' beam (80' over the paddle guards) and 13' depth of hold, and rated at 1525 tons. She was a side-wheel steamer built entirely of wood with a single-cylinder "walking-beam" steam engine with a 57" bore and a 122" stroke. Another source gives slightly different dimensions: 283.2' long, 34.8' on the beam, 13.6' depth of hold, and 1,319 tons. Her paddle wheels were 32' in diameter and fitted with 10' long "buckets" (the maritime world for the wooden planks fitted to the wheel that acted as paddles) Turner, one of the most prominent Pacific Northwest maritime historians, described Yosemite as follows: Service in California Yosemite was first placed in service by the California Steam Navigation Company in 1863 to run with Chrysopolis on the Sacramento River. Daily service, Sundays excepted, was provided from San Francisco leaving at 4pm for Sacramento. On October 12, 1865, as she was leaving the Rio Vista landing bound down river, her boiler (supposedly a safer "low-pressure" model) exploded, killing 55 people and scalding and injuring many more. She was equipped with new boilers then, and once again in 1876, after which she could reach a speed of an hour. Railroad competition in California forced her to be laid up at Oakland from 1879 to 1883.