The California Schooner Sails to Klawock, Alaska in 1878 with 18 Chinese Laborers

A schooner (a sailing ship with two or more masts) like this would have been used to set sail from the Pacific Coast to Alaska. https://alaskahistoricalsociety.org/anchors-of-anchorage-dastardly-deed-strands-schooner-courtney-ford/

With the first salmon canneries set to open in southeast Alaska in 1878, the transcontinental railroad labor contractor Sisson, Wallace, and Co. in San Francisco created a new company called the North Pacific Packing and Trading Company. They intended to transform some of the existing fish salteries in Alaska into salmon canneries. They prepared the schooner California with needed supplies and also Chinese laborers which they had plenty of from the completion of the railroad construction. This included 120 tons of equipment for a steam sawmill and cannery, 50 tons of tin, along with the first 18 Chinese laborers to ever work in an Alaskan cannery. They were hired specifically to make the tin cans by hand.

Since the official government transport was not available at the time, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sent Special Agent Morris to make sure things went as planned. They were in charge to help oversee the Alaska Territory in terms of resources and public services.

Before the California was due to arrive after the 3 month voyage, word had spread to the local Native Tlingits and also to the unemployed white men in Klawock that 18 Chinese men were on their way. The Native encampments began to protest the landing of the California because they were worried that the Chinese were being brought up to catch the fish and take away employment from the Natives, who desperately needed jobs. They were told that if the Natives would learn to make the tin cans, then there would be no need to hire the Chinese. They also felt that it was their right to have these jobs as it was their land and they had been fishing those waters for centuries.

Once the California reached Klawock, protesting continued by the Natives. The ship was not to unload anything until if was safe and there was no danger to the crew. After reassurance by the crew to the Native community that the Chinese were only going to make tin cans and then be sent back were they able to unload all of the equipment. Those 18 Chinese men were able to safely come ashore and find lodging from a local tribesman, settle in and have a meal of fish and rice that day.

This story was not only the very beginning of the salmon canning industry in Alaska, but it is also of historical importance because it happens to be the very first time that Chinese laborers worked in Alaska as well. What began in 1878 with just 18 Chinese men looking for work from overseas, eventually led to thousands of Chinese men and women working in the salmon canneries along the Pacific Coast, continuing over a century later.