Hammond to Merivale (Permanent Under-Secretary)
24 November 1858
Sir,
With reference to your letter of the 15th of September last, 1 I am directed by the Earl of Malmesbury to transmit to you herewith, for the information of Secretary Sir Edward Lytton, a copy of a Despatch from Mr Bidwell, the Acting British Consul at Panama, announcing the departure from that place for San Francisco of Captain Grant and the Party of the RoyalEngineersManuscript image Engineers who left Southampton on the 17th of September last for British Columbia.
I am etc.
E. Hammond
Minutes by CO staff
Manuscript image
Put by.
ABd 25 Nov
Documents enclosed with the main document (not transcribed)
Manuscript image
Charles Bidwell to Malmesbury, No. 43, 22 October 1858, reporting the arrival of Captain Grant and his detachment on 9 October and their departure for San Francisco via the Pacific Mail Company's steamer Sonora 2 on 16 October.
Footnotes
  1. = M-AD, 15 Sep 58, FIND Mer-Admiralty, 15 September 1858, re departure of Grant?
  2. The Sonora, built for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in October 1853, was a wooden sidewheel steamer, 269' long and 1617 tons, at a cost of $302,000. It operated on the run from Panama to San Francisco between May 1854 and May 1863. In 1865 it made one more voyage to Panama, delivering troops why??, and in 1868 was dismantled and broken up in Sausalito. Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848-1869, p. 247.
People in this document

Bidwell, Charles Toll

Blackwood, Arthur Johnstone

Grant, John Marshall

Hammond, Edmund

Lytton, Edward George Earle Bulwer

Malmesbury, James, Howard

Merivale, Herman

Organizations in this document

Foreign Office

Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty

Vessels in this document

SS Sonora, 1853-1868

Places in this document

British Columbia

Panama

San Francisco