California Coast & Ocean

When George Davidson first arrived in San Francisco in 1850, it was a raw and perilous town. By the time he and his wife Elinor returned in 1867, as head of the Survey on the West Coast, San Francisco had become one of the world's great port cities. It was his home for the rest of his life, but he left it regularly for scientific journeys around the world.

Davidson observed transits of Venus and other astronomical phenomena, including a total solar eclipse in Alaska, a vast region he had played a major role in securing as an American possession. While in Alaska for the 1869 eclipse, he met the distinguished Chilkat leader Kohklux, which led to a major ethnographic project of the Coast Survey (see sidebar).

The Pacific Coast Pilot
Davidson's work with Bache on the Notes on the Coast during the Civil War had a lifelong impact on him. In 1862 he worked up his travel diary notes and other materials to produce the Directory of the Pacific Coast, which was his version of the Notes, applied to the Pacific. The rest of his life he continued to update and expand the Directory, later called the Pacific Coast Pilot. His magnum opus is the fourth revised edition of that book, published in 1889.

In every edition of the work, he introduces Point Conception this way: "Once seen, it will never be forgotten." The volume distills the knowledge and wisdom of many decades spent sailing the waters along California, Washington, and Oregon. It is voluminous but elegantly written, with a keen eye for the sum of experience of each place, the historical changes Davidson had seen directly, as well as matters like which reefs to avoid, where breaks in the kelp are, and what sailing tack would work under which wind. All told, it is a remarkable achievement for a man who spent most of his life in coastal waters yet never learned to swim.

The Pacific Coast Pilot is the last hurrah of an important type of nautical information, coastal views. In 18th-century sailing guides, these began as engravings showing ships under full billowing sail, with generic coastal features to the side and in the background. Over time, the sails billowed less, and real, specific headlands were rendered. The waves and foam diminished, and eventually the ships disappeared entirely.

From the beginning on the West Coast, Coast Survey artists sketched masterful views of specific headlands, such as William MacMurtrie's view of Point Conception published in 1853. Vantages of individual headlands eventually evolved into "roll-out" coastal views, taking advantage of the fact that on the West Coast the Survey always worked from steam-powered ships that could sail steadily in any wind or current. The steamer maintained a steady speed relative to the coast, and the Survey artist made a series of rapid progressive sketches of the coast looking straight at it from offshore. Later, back on shore, the geodetic framework established by the triangulation network allowed those views to be combined into one continuous drawing that could encompass dozens of miles along the coast.

Davidson supplied many sketches himself, then later commissioned Ferdinand Westdahl, a gifted Swedish immigrant hydrographer. Westdahl had a naturally elegant and spare graphic style, very moderne. In preparation for the 1889 edition of the Pacific Coast Pilot, Westdahl completed hundreds of roll-out views, some of which were then reduced and transferred to engraved views published in the book. Westdahl's coastal views are particularly important documents because they display the California coast before it was transformed by roads and modern coastal development.

Davidson and Westdahl also experimented with integrating photography and sketches, as Davidson predicted that photographs of the coastline would eventually supplant sketches. Photography never substituted for the roll-out views; instead, in the 20th century coastal view sketches disappeared. In the 21st century, coastal views have returned, particularly through the remarkable images obtained by the California Coastal Records Project (www.californiacoastline.org). Those sets of images can be usefully compared. (See the next issue of Coast & Ocean for a story on the Coastal Records Project.)