Gold Seekers Sail on the Zealandia

Seven Hundred Fortune Hunters Off to Try Their Luck at Cape Nome.

Docks Are Crowded With Friends and Relatives to Bid Them Godspeed.

Something like the scenes when the first army transports were sailing, soldier laden, for the Philippines, was that of yesterday afternoon at the Pacific dock when the steamship Zealandia puffed out for Nome fairly alive with excited humanity, all her flags flying and her whistles blowing a shrill good-bye in response to the various cries and hat and handkerchief waving of the thousands of men, women and children, relatives, friends and curious, gathered on the dock from wihch she sailed and the Broadway dock, opposite. Laughter, tears, sobs and cheers expressed the various emotions of those in the throng.

This, the largest steamer thur far sent to Nome, carried the largest number of people that yet has gone at one time. There were 750 passengers and a crew of 120 aboard; 870 souls in all. In the crowd gay youth and hoary old age brushed together. Many women were aboard, most of them going without male protection to seek their fortunes in the greatest mining camp of all times.

The dock from which the Zealandia sailed woud have been so jammed with spectators that the passengers would have found it almost impossible to get aboard had not entrance been restricted. The overflow filled the space on the seawall, and the Broadway dock carried a large throng.

Gets Away on Time.

Assistant Superintendent L. A. Phillips of the Alaska Exploration Company, under whose flag the steamer sailed, and the company's secretary, S. W. Saalburg, were there to superintend the departure of the vessel. She got away at 3:15 p.m, only a quarter of an hour later than the schedule time. Several passengers came near getting left. One belated passenger was rowed out to the ship just as she backed into the stream and was hauled aboard.

The most interesting passengers on the ship were an aged couple, pioneers of California. They were going to Alaska to "begin life anew", as the snowy-headed husband put it. Varum Westcott, 75 years of age, of Soled__ and Helen M. Westcott, his wife, also 75, found their way, hand clapped in hand, through the dense crowd and on to the ship, where they seemed to take all the eager interest exhibited by younger people in the getting away of the ship.

"I'm going up there to mine," said the old man, his eyes bright with expectancy. "I mined in California in '49 and I haven't forgotten how. We've got as complete an outfit as anybody going up."

"We want to be where the excitement is," piped the old lady, "and that's why we're going up there."

Has a Political Mission.

Edward McGettigan, formerly a member of the Democratic State Central Committee, for years in control of the Mare Island Navy yard and known among politicians from one end of California to the other, was one of the passengers, his son Lowis accompanying him. Mr. McGettigan goes as the representative of the wholesale liquor house which he has represented for years, but it is said he has another mission, which is to aid in fullfilling the politcal aspirations of his friend, Tom Geary of Santa Rosa. The ex-Congressman sailed nearly two weeks ago for Nome, and it is said that in addition to a desire to make money practicing law there he has an ambition to represent the greater Alaska in the National House of Representatives. Campaigning in Alaska, where it sometimes takes a month or more to go from one principle town to another, will be quite a different thing from what it is here, and the office-seeker will be pzzled as to where to begin and where end.

H. L. Byrne, the capitalist, and Charles Watson of the Standard Oil Company went along, the former to invest in mones, the latter to represent his company.

Phil Howell, the bookmaker; Sam Dannenbaum and Mose Selig formed part of the crowd that left on the ship. Howell took along a big portable house with ten auxilaries and will start a general sporting resort there. Dannebaum and Selig will embark in the cigar business. The pair sat on a lifeboat as the ship pulled out and drank to their friends from a bottle of champaigne. Dannenbaum waving an American flag the while.

Catpain I. N. Hibbard, general superintendant for the A. E. Company; H. A. Brigham, superintendant of the mining department, and W. H. Dohrmann, its chief accountant at St. Michael, sailed on the Zealandia.

Woman Passenger Faints.

The excitement and close atmosphere on the deck overcame Mrs. Rosenberg, who goes to Nome to start a swell restaurant, and a few minutes before the boat pulled out she fell in a faint amidst a party of friends on the dock. They immediately tried to revive her, and though she soon regained consciousness she semmed in a sort of stupor and unaware of what was going on around her.

"Look her," exclaimed Assistant Superintendant Phillips, tapping her on the shoulder. "Do you know this boat leaves in three minutes and that if you don't get aboard you won't get to Nome?"

Consciousness of her enterprise seemed to rush suddenly back to Mrs. Rosenberg at these words. She sprang to her feet, brushed the hair from her eyes and dashed up the grangplank before her friends could even shake hands with her. When the steamer pulled out she stood at the rail on the hurricane deck waiving her handkerchief and smiling.

Vincent Hook, formerly Sheriff of Contra Costa County, and Mitchell Phillips of San Jose, at one time chief stevedore for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in this city, were also among the passengers. Hook has claims at Nome, and Phillips represents a mining and trading company for which 200 tons of machinery were shipped on another boat. He took seven men with him.

Chinese Cooks Left Behind.

Twenty-eight Chinese cooks employed by the company were at the dock ready to sail, but they did not get away. They refused to submit to vaccination ordered by the Health Board and were not allowed to go aboard. There men were employed at $65 a month each. The company woud have preferred while cooks at even better wages, but white men cannot be depended on because they quit work and rush to the scene of every new mining excitement, leaving the company in the lurch. Another force of cooks will be secured and sent up on the Humbeoldt Wednesday week.

Ex-Superior Judge Ansel Smith and J. B. McNamara, a sporting man of Stockton, sailed with the crowd. Mrs. Polsky and her daughter of the same town went on the Zealandia to seek fortune in Nome. Jon Dearin of O'Donnell & Dearin, the Grant-avenue saloon men, went along, as did Billy Fitzgerald, the politician, who will probably start a pure-politics club in Nome with a picture of Chirs Buckley over the door as a source of inspiration.

Source: a San Francisco California newspaper, 1900

Lineage of Varum Wescott: David 7, Ephraim 6, Oliver 5, George 4, Jeremiah Jr 3, Jeremiah 2, Stukely 1