Enclosed is Bidwell to Malmesbury 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 on 16 October.
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 RoyalEngineers Engineers who left Southampton on the 17th of
September last for British Columbia.
= M-AD, 15 Sep 58,
FIND Mer-Admiralty, 15 September 1858, re departure of Grant?
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.