Mathew Bold Cox (1818?–80) was born in England, but grew up in New York. He served as superintendent of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s docks from 1849, when he arrived in San Francisco, until he resigned in 1872. During Clemens’s voyage from New York to San Francisco in March and April, Cox was a fellow passenger on the Henry Chauncey and his cabinmate on the Sacramento. On 1 May Clemens wrote the Chicago Republican, “My royal roommate, Capt. Cox, of the San Francisco department of the Pacific Mail, was the life and soul of this voyage.” He recalled “that splendid old chief, slaving night and day to make everybody else comfortable and happy, and never once thinking of himself,” remembered him “turning out of his bunk at unreasonable hours of the morning, swallowing my smoke, and coughing and barking, and yet swearing all the time that tobacco smoke never inconvenienced him,” and concluded that “in all the varied phases and circumstances of a long sea voyage” he could not recall one moment when Cox “was not a generous, and a willing helper of all in time of need, and a gentleman in the best sense of the term” (SLC 1868). In “Ye Equinoctial Storm,” one of the poems Clemens wrote on board the Sacramento, he mentioned Cox and “virtuous Marcus Twain” among those who rebuked a “disgraceful mob” of revelers for setting “their lungs afloat in floods of tangle-foot whiskee” (SLC 1884). Long after Cox’s death another acquaintance recalled him as “a noble hearted Englishman and a charming companion when sober,” but suggested that “whiskey got away with him at last” (Hopkins, 182–83; “The Ranks Thinning,” San Francisco Alta California, 19 Apr 80, 1).

The Montana was commanded by John M. Cavarly (1832–95), a former clipper-ship captain from New London, Connecticut, who had worked for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company since 1864. Clemens may have known him at the Lick House, his San Francisco residence (“Ocean Steamers,” San Francisco Alta California, 6 July 68, 4; San Francisco Morning Call: “Items from Sea and Shore,” 8 Feb 91, 3; “Died,” 31 Oct 95, 15; San Francisco City and County 1869, 19).

Oliver O. Eldridge (1818–1902), originally from Yarmouth, Massachusetts, was the West Coast manager and booking agent for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. He was one of the San Francisco citizens whom Mark Twain’s lecture handbill had represented as signing the “call” for him to leave rather than lecture (“Deaths,” San Francisco Chronicle, 18 Dec 1902, 12; San Francisco City and County 1867, s.v. “Eldridge, Oliver”; “Grand Dinner to the Chinese Embassy,” San Francisco Alta California, 29 Apr 68, 1; SLC 1868).

Exodus 2:22.

According to the Montana’s memoranda, the ship could not have been at latitude 24⁰15’ on 11 July, as Clemens’s dateline indicates: at 12:09 a.m. on that day the ship arrived at Cabo San Lucas, at roughly latitude 23⁰, and was at about 21⁰ by nightfall. His comment here, however, that the Montana was “expecting to meet the Golden City every minute,” implies that the date is correct but not the latitude reading: the two ships seem to have passed—without sighting each other—early in the morning of 12 July. Furthermore, their schedules would normally bring them into proximity late on the Montana’s fifth day out of San Francisco, at about latitude 20⁰, as occurred on their next trip (San Francisco Evening Bulletin: “Arrival of the ‘Golden City,’” 18 July 68, 5; “Arrival of the ‘Montana,’” 11 Aug 68, 3; “Arrival of the ‘Montana,’” 16 Sept 68, 3).

Charles Dickinson had also been a fellow passenger on the Henry Chauncey and the Sacramento, presumably the “young Dickinson” who assisted at the drunken festivities of the “brawling gang” (SLC 1884; “Passengers for California,” San Francisco Alta California, 16 Mar 68, 1).