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The photo above, of the World War II victory celebration in the Philippines Islands Leyte Gulf, was sent back home to the editor of Red Lion Echoes by John H. Eberly, Y 3/c, USS Vesuvius AE-15. It was published, along with the letter below, in the October 1945 issue. For more on the USS Vesuvius, click here.

Lewis Miller Drawing of the California Company

Gold was discovered in California in early 1848. By the beginning of 1849, more adventurers from York County than you might think were headed for the gold fields, never mind the grueling voyage by sea around the tip of South America. The January 23, 1849 Democratic Press reports:

"Our young townsman, Mr. Joseph McAleer, son of Thomas McAleer, Esq., left this place yesterday for the "Gold Diggings" in California. He intends joining a party which is to set sail in a vessel from New York during the present week, consisting of one hundred persons. Each member has advanced $160.00, and they go supplied with necessities to last them for two years. They are accompanied by a physician, and well provided with rifles, fowling pieces, &c. We understand the route they intend taking is by way of Cape Horn, which is a distance of nineteen thousand miles to San Francisco. They will be gone six or seven months on their way"

The article goes on to say that McAleer has promised to write back to the paper about his voyage and sojourn in California. George Laumaster of Burlington, N.J., son of Jacob Laumaster is said to also be a member of the party.

By April 1849, sixteen other York County professionals and craftsmen had organized themselves into "The California Company" and were equipped and ready to sail on the ship Andalusia from Baltimore. For more on their voyage, see my recent York Sunday News column below:

A previous post noted that a native Yorker, Richard M. Watt, was an expert witness in court concerning why the "unsinkable" Titanic sank. Click here to read that post.

No one was more surprised that April day than the vice-president of the White Star Line, Philip A. S. Franklin, whose parents were both natives of York.

Richard M. Watt, second from left, and the U.S.S. Maine

This week's Sunday News carried a story about a new book titled What Really Sank the Titanic. The authors came to a different conclusion that that offered by Rear Admiral Richard M. Watt, expert witness and York native, who testified in the 1915 White Star Line liability trial.

Watt, former Chief Constructor in the U.S. Navy faulted the owners, the White Star Line, for not allowing the builders to install longitudinal bulkheads and water-tight doors on the Titanic.