Posts Tagged ‘Crime’

When I was at San Diego, a great many complaints were made by citizens there, and persons arriving from the Gila, of a gang of lawless men who had established a ferry over the Colorado, where not only they practised the greatest extortions, but committed murders and robberies . . .

Read about the Glanton gang at the Yuma Crossing: The Scalp Hunters.

The Yuma crossing

The arrival of the British tall ship Dudhope in San Diego harbor on November 30, 1914 was an impressive sight.  Describing her “massive yards and mast and the white sails hauled tight by the brisk breeze” the Union called the 2000-ton tall ship a “marine spectacle.”

 The steel-hulled bark had the historic distinction being the last cargo-carrying windjammer to enter San Diego via the storied Cape Horn route.  But the ship would be better remembered for a surprising mutiny.

Read more about “The Dudhope Mutiny”

The closing of the Stingaree.

Strolling down Fifth Street any evening, the ear is rasped by the notes from asthmatic pianos, discordant banjos and fiddles, and half-drunken voices that sing boisterous and ribald songs. The eye is pained to see one, two, or perhaps three men on each corner, so intoxicated that they can barely stand . . . the lower Fifth Street in San Diego is fully as bad, if not worse than the notorious Barbary Coast district of San Francisco . . .

Read about the Stingaree.