You decide to take the long way around. Literally.  You spend nearly all your savings for passage to California on the SS Albany.

From New York, San Francisco is 16,000 nautical miles away, as the ship must travel all the way around the southern tip of South America, before heading north up the Pacific Coast to California. You will cross the equator twice.

It’s a distance so great, a traveler from Hawaii could make it to California and back a full four times before you’d even arrive.

Sydney, Bombay, Shanghai, Tokyo, Cairo — nearly every major city on the planet had quicker passage to San Francisco than New York.

Before you clear New York State’s sovereign waters, passengers are already seasick. Within days, the perishable food has been eaten or discarded.

The water is foul, there are worms in the rock-hard biscuits and bread, and sailors seeking their sea legs in brandy barrels add a sickeningly sweet scent to the already nauseating menagerie of maritime odors.

The monotony of sea travel drives one passenger to suicide. You heard him — thought it was a dream, but heard him — muttering to himself, to God and to King Neptune. You heard his cry fade into the black night, but thought nothing of it till daybreak.

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