Better Lives, Bitter Lies National Park Service

#9 Special Episode: Preserving Historic Ships with Rigger Josh Payne and Shipwright Josh Brown

What is a chantey? Is 2021's surprising viral hit "The Wellerman" really one? And what does San Francisco Maritime's longtime music programs coordinator, Peter Kasin, have to say for everyone looking to follow this internationally flavored music?

For the first three decades of the 20th century, the park's square-rigged cargo ship, Balclutha, sailed under the name Star of Alaska for the Alaska Packers Association. This episode explores that period of the ship's lifetime, as well as the Pacific Coast histories entwined with it: canning, labor organizing, debt peonage, and muckraking journalism.

John C. Fremont named the entrance to San Francisco Bay "the Golden Gate to the Orient." What has happened when ships crossed it to build their empire on the other side of the ocean? This episode examines a chapter of history that led to the United States expanding into Asia -- and brought Filipinos to California believing a distinct version of the American Dream.

At the turn of the 20th century, San Francisco faced a plague that devastated Europe in centuries past. As sickness began spreading through Chinatown, its most densely populated neighborhood, the city had to confront the deadliness of this disease and its own societal ills.

Among the people who arrived in San Francisco in the late 1800s were Asian girls and women trafficked for the purpose of prostitution. Sometimes called “daughters of joy,” they were the victims of kidnapping, abuse, and a form of slave trade practiced openly on the waterfront well into the 20th century.