NOTE: This “Card” signed by passengers aboard the SS Independence from New York to Chagres, expresses their total disapproval of the manner in which they were treated on board a ship, by the Captain’s own admission, whose “engine” was “not worth a pin.” Through tickets were not honored and the passengers expressed their “sense of personal aggrievement” to the thousands coming to California, that they not be “misled by the foulest misrepresentation.”

CARD.

"(We, the passengers of) the Steamship Independence, Stoddard, Captain, from New York bound for Chagres, would respectfully desire, through the medium of this memorial, to present to the public some of the grievences that compel us to this extreme measure, to wit:

A calm and dispassionate enumeration of some of the causes of dissatisfacion and acts of injustice that have elicited this expression of feeling on the part of the undersigned.

1st. With the most unequivical assurance on the part of the agent, E. Mills, and those in his employ, of the speed, safety, and seawhorthiness of the Steamship Independence, our lives and property have been endangered on a vessal totally unfit for the trade, and whose engine, by the public admission of the Captain, was not worth a pin.

2d. Having purchased our tickets on good faith, with a confident expectation of a bona fide transportation to Chagres, we have beeen compelled, under threat of being thrown on our own resources in a strange and unhealthy climate, to advance additional passage fare on board the Cherokee from Kingston, thence to Chagres, our first port of destination.

3d. Having sold through tickets purporting to carrying passenger to San Francisco, without having made the necessary arraingements for effecting this object, many, under the direst extremity, have been compelled to sacrifice their tickets at the most ruinous rates, leaving themselves, in some instances, almost penniless.

4th. Other causes of complaint might be urged, but we deem the above a sufficient exposition of the unwarrantable conduct of the proprietors and agents of the Steam Ship Independence.

We deem our course, under the exigencies of the case, absolutely imperative, not only from a sense of personal aggrievment, but to guard the thousand who are coming to California from being misled by the foulest misrepresentation."

/s/

Baker, Geo. W.
Barr, William
Beldon, Joseph
Berry, John
Borland, John
Christy, James
Christy, Wm.
Condrey, Bernard
Crippen, H.R.
Denny, Robert
Drusby, L.P.
Flinn, Robert
Glass, Joseph H.
Golden, C.B.
Gordon, Jacob
Hall, P. George
Harrington, Michael
Harris, Margary
Headley, Samuel F.
Howe, Simeon
Hughey, E.N.
Jones, Joshua
Jordon (Jorden ?), Abraham
Keefer, William M.
Madden, Osborne
McAlvery, Henry
Parsons, Albert
Proctor, George W.
Regus, Frank
Rittridge, F.G.
Snelling, Henderson
Snelling, John P.
Stedman, Wm. S.
Stephens, Benj. W.
VanEpps (Van Epps ?), A.S.

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