Sea Captain's Odyssey

In 1838 a sixteen-year-old-boy named Hans Buhne sailed from his home in Flensburg, Denmark and began his first adventure as a cabin boy on a whaling ship. He survived a shipwreck in 1845, and went on to whale in many oceans before arriving in San Francisco just after gold was discovered in 1849. He decided to try his luck in the mines, but illness soon forced him back to San Francisco. Desperate for funds, he accepted a post as second mate on the Laura Virginia, a ship hired to discover a rumored but hidden bay on the wild and inhospitable northern California Coast. Dozens of other ships were also setting out to find this hidden bay, which would provide safe anchor for ships and thus supply route to the inland mines. Buhne had chanced onto the winning ship: the Laura Virginia was the first to find the bay, and Buhne himself made history when he successfully piloted the first boat of white settlers across the bar into what was soon named Humboldt Bay. He decided that this bay, surrounded by endless redwood forests, would be his home, and he developed several enterprises to secure a living: he became a canvas hotelier, ran a mule train, and piloted ships across the bar. He received an arrow in his lung, almost drowned when he tried to lead the rescue of a damaged schooner, and soon became a local legend as an expert bar pilot on Humboldt Bay. Slowly his fortunes rose. When Buhne died in 1894 he was one of the wealthiest men in northern California.