The white schooner struggled into Mazatlán harbor and dropped anchor. Listing heavily to starboard from an unbalanced load, her mainsail tossed across the decking like a worn rag, the latest voyage of the Alexander Agassiz had ended in ignominious failure. The 85-foot vessel was the sole asset of the Pacific Coast Trading and Shipping Company, a coastal trader that operated at the bottom of the pyramid in comparison to the powerful trading houses like Melchers Sucesores. Since being organized the year before, through lack of knowledge of local conditions and local agents, total ignorance of the shipping business, and above all, its boat having to fly the American flag in Mexican waters, Pacific Coast Trading had fallen deeply into debt.
The contract signed with Señor Meistiero had been expected to reverse the downward spiral. Santos Meistiero, a wealthy Spaniard from Tepic, had agreed to pay $500 per month in American gold to charter the Alexander Agassiz to carry his cargo and trade goods, and was to pay an additional $100 per month in American gold for the owner’s services in running the boat. At last profitability had seemed within reach. The first assignment from Meistiero was to carry a consignment of corn from San Blas to Manzanillo—an easy trip of 285 nautical miles. The schooner’s hold was loaded with sixty-five tons of corn and off she headed down the coast.
Their troubles began at once.
The Alexander Agassiz was rated to carry a maximum of fifty tons of cargo and was now dangerously overloaded. Before the schooner had traveled far, seawater began to wash over her deck, filling the hold. To save the boat, the crew threw two hundred bags of corn overboard, and about four hundred gallons of distillate (the kerosene-like fuel that powered the engines) was washed away as well. The schooner’s captain took down the sails and ropes and used them to lash the corn in place; when the corn was thrown over the side, the ropes went over at the same time. With its unevenly distributed load, the Alexander Agassiz was close to capsizing. As a final blow, the engineer hired for the trip had proved incapable of handling the engines and both went dead on the high sea.
Through an act of Providence, another boat soon arrived on the scene. Its engineer came aboard the Agassiz and restarted the engines, allowing the schooner to limp into Mazatlán, where the crew was ordered to offload the remaining corn. Since the corn was now wet, the schooner’s owner didn’t want to take the chance of the grain swelling up and bursting the sides of the boat.
It was a major setback. Without Señor Meistiero’s business, the “Pacific Coast Trading and Shipping Company” would sink even further in red ink. At this point, most men would have accepted defeat and quit the business altogether. But if anyone expected that to happen, they had never met the woman who owned the Alexander Agassiz—Maude M. Lochrane.
The role of a woman in society was narrowly defined in 1917, in both public and private life. Women did not have the right to vote. If a woman was married, she was expected to stay at home, manage the household, and care for the children. If she was single, she could obtain a clerical or secretarial position, or work as a teacher; the thought that a woman could lead a corporation was inconceivable. A woman was considered “proper” if she was demure, self-effacing, and attentive. When appearing in public, she was expected to wear a dress of appropriate length, with a hat that ensured that the sun never colored her fair skin. A woman who was openly engaging toward male counterparts, or drew attention by dying her hair, ran the risk of being scorned as an “adventuress.”
Maude Lochrane was ahead of her time. Forty years old, she could easily pass for ten years younger. She had strong Irish features, light blue eyes, and a full head of bright auburn hair that gave her the nickname “the geranium.” Maude’s red hair complemented her complexion—a perpetual sunburn highlighted by freckles. Although she stood just five feet four inches tall and weighed a mere 110 pounds, Maude Lochrane exuded an energy, alertness, and fiery temperament that far outweighed her diminutive stature. Upon learning that business partners had pulled a shady deal, her response to an associate was “many has been the time when I would have liked to have them by the throat.” She could captain her schooner from morning ’til night and then discuss business over a beer at the cantina (saloon) in Mazatlán. One man who knew her at the time described her as “Miss Maude Lochrane with a head of auburn hair, yes, decidedly auburn. Her complexion was tanned to a—well I shall call it—red. Once seen she was never to be forgotten.”
Maude Lochrane’s childhood had been marred by tragedy and hardship, and the experiences of those early years helped to create the burning desire for success that would characterize much of her life. She was born in Michigan on April 16, 1878. Adopted as an orphan at the age of six by a family named Wheeler, her formal education had ended in eighth grade, when she “had to go out to work and earn a living.” From that point forward, Maude would battle her way through life on her own, learning as she went. Along the way she developed a considerable capacity as a businesswoman.
In 1903, at the age of twenty-five, Maude took a position as a stenographer with the A. C. Varney Company, an architectural firm in Detroit, and was able to gain some experience in architectural drawing on the side. Two years later, becoming restless, she entered service to an elderly woman named Mrs. Gilson whom she cared for and accompanied on a transcontinental trip to California. Maude was “quite an entertaining talker,” and in her next job as sales agent for an electric vibrator company, she traveled throughout Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico hawking the firm’s products. In 1906, she returned to California and was employed as a bookkeeper by the Southwest Electrical Company, a manufacturer of electrical wiring and fixtures. She advanced quickly in the Southwest organization, and within a year was promoted to manager of the company’s San Bernardino branch office. It seemed that Maude’s early years of hardship were now behind her and a bright financial future lay ahead. Her rising stature became apparent to all in a front page story that was published in the November 14, 1907, edition of the San Bernardino Daily Sun:
Local Men Get Together to Put under
Cultivation Kern County Lands
A meeting was held yesterday of the members of the syndicate which recently acquired 485 acres of choice land in the Kern County foothill district for taking steps to perfect an incorporation, it being determined to adopt the name “Foothill Citrus Farms Company.” The incorporation papers will be forwarded to Sacramento at once. The capital stock of the corporation has been placed at $24,000 with $9,600 actually paid in.
The stockholders and their holdings are: A.A. Cox $400, Miss Maude M. Lochrane, $800, C. Meyer $400, Ralph L. Haven $800, A.A. Neff and F.L. Henry $2000 . . . As soon as the corporation is perfected officers will be chosen. The company controls three-quarters of a section of land located in the Kern County foothill district that is especially adapted to the culture of both the orange and apple, as well as many other fruit crops and vines. Apples and oranges grown in this vicinity are as fine as any produced in the State.
Readers of the Daily Sun were likely impressed that a young woman, a recent arrival to the city, had acquired the means to participate in a real estate investment with a prominent group of local businessmen. One reader took particular interest in the story—Hiram S. Roach, the president and general manager of the Southwest Electrical Company. Ten months later, another story appeared in the San Bernardino Daily Sun:
IS ANXIOUS TO FIND A GIRL
Electrical Supply Man Says He Has
Been Buncoed by a Fair Lady
Who Is Now among the Missing
Where is Miss Maude Lochrane? H.S. Roach of the Southwest Electrical Company is seeking her, and says that he will have a warrant for her, charging her with embezzlement.
It is alleged that while Miss Lochrane was managing the local store of the company Roach became suspicious that her accounts were not straight. She was transferred to Riverside, and the company put experts on her books. The allegation is made that they discovered a shortage of something like $1,600.
Roach took the matter up with the District Attorney’s office, and says that when he returned from the mountains he was informed that there was no way that a case could be made against the young woman. She, in the meantime, had left the locality, and though it is now two months since she left, Roach proposes to commence prosecution.
In justice to the absent woman, it should be said that at the time she was threatened with arrest she retained an attorney here, being determined to lift the cloud from her name if Roach pressed his proposed prosecution.
Whether Maude Lochrane—initially hired as a bookkeeper by the electrical products company despite having only an eighth-grade education—was guilty of honest accounting errors or grand larceny will forever remain a mystery. For whichever reason, Maude quickly relocated to El Paso, Texas, where in the coming years she took a variety of jobs, from “canvasser” (opinion taker) to the proprietor of the Raymond Hotel. In 1915, after the seven-year statute of limitations had expired, eliminating any chance of Hiram Roach prosecuting her to recover the alleged shortage, Maude resurfaced in California and settled in Los Angeles. There she pursued a new career as a reporter, while devoting her free time to civic causes in greater Los Angeles.
At this point she met a man named Guillermo Taliferro, better known as “William Taylor,” who proposed the idea of forming a coastal shipping company to carry freight and passengers between Mexican ports. William Taylor had a number of personal shortcomings; he was a somewhat lazy and indifferent individual, he lived off money sent to him by his wife in Massachusetts, which he spent on beer and other women, and the U.S. government had outstanding charges against him for handling counterfeit Mexican currency. But Taylor had one attribute that made him invaluable to Maude Lochrane—a male name to use in corresponding with businessmen on shipping matters. Although William Taylor would be listed as “General Manager” of the Pacific Coast Trading and Shipping Company and Maude Lochrane as “Secretary,” it was Maude who would organize the company, arrange financial backing, and be the driving force behind it. She began by leasing a small office in the prestigious Merchants Trust Building in downtown Los Angeles, had a telephone installed, and arranged for impressive stationary to be printed. Then Maude and William Taylor went searching for a boat to charter and discovered the Alexander Agassiz.
In 1903 a Harvard-educated zoologist, Dr. William E. Ritter, and a group of like-minded colleagues founded a research station for the study of marine biology on San Diego Bay, which they named the Marine Biological Association. They began operations in a converted boathouse next to the exclusive Hotel del Coronado, and collected specimens with a rented schooner piloted by a Portuguese fisherman. From these humble beginnings, the marine station grew rapidly and, with patronage from a group of wealthy San Diego citizens led by newspaperman E. W. Scripps and his sister Ellen, produced significant oceanographic findings. Scripps even donated his personal yacht, the Loma, to the association to help further its work. In 1906, when the Loma ran aground and was wrecked near the Point Loma lighthouse, the directors of the association decided to commission a boat specifically designed for use in marine zoological research. A contract was signed with San Diego boat builder Lawrence Jensen, and six months later, the research vessel Alexander Agassiz was launched.
Named after an eminent Swiss marine biologist, the Alexander Agassiz was a schooner-rigged “ketch” with a large deck area in front of the main mast and the wheel placed behind the rear mast. A flat-bottomed boat designed to operate in shallow water as well as on the open ocean, the schooner was eighty-five feet in length and had a beam twenty-six feet wide, yet only drew five feet of water and could house nine people comfortably. To augment its sail power, the Alexander Agassiz was equipped with two 30-horsepower Western Standard engines that could deliver a maximum speed of 9 knots. Its fuel tanks had a combined storage capacity of 650 gallons of distillate, providing a range (powered by engines alone) of 850 miles. The combined cost of the boat, engines, sails, instruments, and accessory hardware totaled $16,000, a significant sum in 1907, but the Alexander Agassiz would prove to be a fine vessel for conducting marine research and well worth the original investment. After her trial cruise to the Coronado Islands off the coast of northwestern Mexico, Dr. Fred Baker, who ran the schooner for the association, noted approvingly, “the boat is above criticism except in very minor matters,” and the schooner was soon employed in a series of nautical excursions in support of the station’s scientific studies.
Within a decade of its founding, the Marine Biological Association was recognized as one of the most significant marine research institutions in North America. On February 13, 1912, it gained even greater prominence when it became a department of the University of California—the Scripps Institution for Biological Research—by assigning “all properties, privileges, and rights” to the university. One of the assets transferred was the schooner Alexander Agassiz, which was described in the official record of the University of California as “a two-masted schooner . . . fitted out with the standard equipment of the International Commission for Investigation of the Sea, including apparatus for sounding, for dredging to a depth of 6,000 feet, for trawling, for hydrographic work, and for plankton work. The boat is thoroughly seaworthy and available for collecting expeditions not only along the California shores but for deep sea voyages as well.”
Now part of the state university system, the research plans of the Scripps Institution began to change in scope and the Alexander Agassiz was found to be unsuitable for the marine exploration being contemplated. It had also become expensive for the school to operate. In July 1914, the Agassiz was taken into dry dock for repairs; its log would show that the schooner had only been in commission for seven days during the previous year. While the vessel sat moored at its anchorage, budgetary pressure was being brought to bear on the Scripps Institution by the Regents of the University of California, and questions were raised concerning the research vessel Alexander Agassiz, now viewed as something of a white elephant.
Then in late 1916, without any advance notice, the Scripps Institution received an offer to rent the dormant schooner. It arrived in the form of a letter that landed on the desk of W. C. Crandall, the institution’s business manager, from William Taylor, the general manager of the Pacific Coast Trading and Shipping Company, who inquired, “Will you kindly advise me by return mail as to whether the boat Alexander Agassiz is for charter? If she is, will you please write full particulars. We want the boat for work on the West Coast.”
After conferring with university officials, Crandall responded, “The Alexander Agassiz is not for charter, but she is for sale. With some alterations she can carry easily 60 tons and be a very comfortable boat. Sale price is $6,000. The Agassiz is probably the best built boat of her type in these waters and her engines are in excellent shape.”
The two aspiring entrepreneurs, Maude Lochrane and William Taylor, were thrilled at the opportunity presented to them. The only problem was that Maude had a total of $500 in her bank account. It would take some creative financing to account for the remaining $5,500 of the purchase price. Maude contacted her brother Frank Wheeler and his wife Minnie and invited them into the partnership. Minnie and Frank owned real estate in Los Angeles and Venice, California, that could be used as security against a loan. Then she wired an offer to the Scripps Institution: the company would pay $6,000 for the Alexander Agassiz, with $500 in cash, and the remainder in installment payments of $300 per month at 7 percent interest until the purchase price was paid in full. As security collateral they offered a property located in Boylston Heights, Los Angeles, valued at $13,000 that carried a $3,000 mortgage.
Crandall brought the proposal to E. W. Scripps and Dr. Ritter, who responded that although the school was experiencing serious budgetary pressure and the schooner was unsuited to their present work, Pacific Coast Trading would have to provide ironclad security for the deal to be approved.
Crandall wired Taylor that “his” offer was unacceptable unless it was backed by a $5,000 bond covering the unpaid balance of the purchase price.
It was a formidable obstacle, but Maude remained undaunted, and turned to the one man she knew who had the financial resources to back her with a $5,000 note—Joseph Mesmer of Los Angeles.
Joseph Mesmer was the president and owner of the St. Louis Fire Brick Company, a major manufacturing enterprise, but more than that, he was an institution in the city of Los Angeles. Among his accomplishments, he had been a member of the Board of Freeholders that wrote a new charter for the city in 1887. He had worked to secure $280,000 in subscriptions to pay for the land used for the Los Angeles post office and federal building, and another $32,000 in subscriptions to obtain the building site for the Chamber of Commerce. He single-handedly brought about the demise of the Alcatraz Paving Trust, a group of businessmen trying to monopolize the supply of paving materials for public roads, an action that significantly reduced the cost of the city’s thoroughfares. The Los Angeles Herald described Mesmer in 1905 as “one of the best known men in Los Angeles. Everybody knows him and everybody knows he is honest. He is a man of wide business experience who has held positions of trust and gained the confidence of the people.” Mesmer was the kind of man rarely encountered today. Not motivated by money, power or ego, his greatest satisfaction came from improving the general welfare of society.
Maude became acquainted with the city leader through her volunteer civic work in Los Angeles. Mesmer had been a member of the Board of Public Works during the reconstruction of the important Broadway Tunnel when they first met, and had been impressed by Maude’s capable work in “making appraisals of property in connection with the opening of the tunnel.” He was also impressed by Maude herself, a woman who began at the lowest station in life and had overcome tremendous obstacles to better her position.
Maude, Frank Wheeler, and William Taylor met with Mesmer and outlined their plan to buy the Alexander Agassiz and use the boat to carry freight between Mexican ports. After listening to their proposal, Mesmer agreed to back them with a $5,000 performance bond. He would make no money on the deal, and provided the bond purely as a favor to his friend Maude Lochrane. To secure the businessman from any future loss, Frank and Minnie Wheeler took out a second mortgage on the California real estate that they owned.
With a $5,000 surety bond from the renowned Joseph Mesmer as guarantee in case of default, the university’s acceptance of their offer was a certainty. On January 12, 1917, the finance committee of the Regents of the University of California approved the sale of the Alexander Agassiz to the Pacific Coast Trading and Shipping Company for $6,000. The agreement that was executed by the parties called for a down payment of $600 in cash, and individual payments of $300 per month for eighteen consecutive months, with the $5,000 bond from Mesmer held as security.
The Alexander Agassiz was immediately moved to a new anchorage in San Diego, and work began on converting the schooner from a research vessel into a freight carrier. The private stateroom was torn out and the main cabin gutted, creating enough space for fifty tons of cargo. On deck, a small galley was constructed aft of the scientists cabin for use in preparing food for crew and passengers. The engine room, which had been well laid out by boat builder Jensen was in pristine condition, and left unchanged.
On January 27, 1917, Wheeler and Taylor sailed out of San Diego harbor with the American flag flying proudly from a staff at the schooner’s stern, bound for Mazatlán, Mexico, in search of their first paying customers. For this initial trip, Maude would stay behind and manage affairs at the office. It was an exciting moment for the shipping company partners and they were in high spirits, believing that they were on their way to making a fortune.
But in business, as in life, timing is everything, and they could not have chosen a worse moment to launch a coastal shipping company in Mexico. While the Alexander Agassiz was on the open ocean cruising toward its destination, events were unfolding in Washington that would have a disastrous impact on the success of their venture. In response to the Kaiser’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, the United States formally severed diplomatic relations with Germany and the smell of war was in the air. To preserve U.S. merchant shipping for a conflict that now appeared inevitable, on February 5, President Wilson issued a proclamation that “no vessel registered or enrolled and licensed under the laws of the United States shall, without the approval of the Shipping Board, be sold, leased, or chartered to any person not a citizen of the United States or transferred to a foreign registry or flag. The penalty for violation . . . is forfeiture of the vessel to the United States and a fine of not more than $5,000, or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.”
In the months that followed the Agassiz’s departure from San Diego, Maude received no word from her partners. She was not overly concerned, since bandit attacks on the railroad often disrupted mail service south of the border, and letters were sometimes delayed or lost after being diverted for examination by censors in Mexico and the United States. Maude filled the empty time studying nautical navigation until she thoroughly mastered the subject, even receiving a navigator’s license in the process. When news from her two business partners in Mexico finally arrived, it landed like a bombshell. To improve their ability to attract customers, they had transferred the registry of the Alexander Agassiz from the American flag to the Mexican flag, a flagrant violation of the recent presidential proclamation.
In a panic, Maude sent telegrams to Guaymas, San José del Cabo, La Paz, Manzanillo, and a handful of other ports along the Mexican west coast, trying to locate the schooner, without success. She anxiously discussed the situation with Joseph Mesmer and John Elliot, the collector of customs in Los Angeles. Elliot immediately dispatched several telegrams to Mexico, with equally poor results. Maude and Mesmer began to wonder whether Taylor might have run away with the Agassiz or sold it. After talking it over with Elliot, they decided that the best course to follow would be for Maude to leave for Mazatlán at once and try to locate the missing boat.
“Change that flag back again as soon as possible!” were Elliot’s final words before she departed.
Maude booked passage on the Pacific Mail steamer San Juan, arriving in Mazatlán on June 4. The most exciting part of the voyage occurred when a passenger named Frederick Wilhelm Fay was taken off the boat by authorities in San Pedro, suspected of being a German spy. After hours spent wandering through a “Chinese puzzle” of Mazatlán streets, she finally located Taylor, who recounted the dismal story of the Pacific Coast Trading and Shipping Company’s activities in Mexico to date.
After they had arrived in Mazatlán, he and Wheeler began making the rounds of the harbor soliciting customers. They landed a few jobs carrying freight and transporting Mexican soldiers between various ports, but were never paid enough to meet expenses. The problem was that the Alexander Agassiz flew an American flag of registry. In Mexico, as in the United States, domestic boats always received first preference for cargo. Only in those circumstances where a Mexican boat was unobtainable could the Agassiz win a job, and when the partners did find a paying customer, as a foreign vessel the Agassiz was assessed extra port charges, pilotage charges, and a variety of lesser fees to operate. Every time that they won business, they lost money. The two men quickly came to the conclusion that to survive in Mexico as a shipping company they would have to transfer the ship’s registry to the Mexican flag. They contacted the French consul, Henri Claisse, who was acting in lieu of the American Consul at the time, and obtained the correct procedure to follow to have the flag changed. The leading lawyer in the port was consulted and permission was granted by the government in Mexico City for the Alexander Agassiz to operate under the Mexican flag. Although none of the officials in Mazatlán knew about President Wilson’s decree forbidding the transfer of American ship registration, the men they were dealing with in Mexico City were fully aware of it, and demanded as a precondition that Wheeler and Taylor bond the boat to the Mexican government for 9,000 pesos ($4,500) for the illegal use of their flag. The end result would be that the Agassiz could carry cargo under Mexican registry, but Pacific Coast Trading would owe the Mexican government $4,500 for being allowed to do so. With no alternative, they had readily agreed.
Now flying the Mexican flag, the schooner at last began to win business—but continued to lose money. As a result of hiring extravagant and unreliable captains, combined with total ignorance of the shipping business, the company went deeper and deeper into debt. Following months of continuous losses, they reached rock bottom in early April when they landed in La Paz with $7 in cash, their fuel tanks empty, and no provisions.
At this moment of desperation, Providence appeared to shine on them when they made the acquaintance of H. A. Macintosh, an American trader with over fifteen years of experience working in Mexico. Macintosh was employed by the Los Angeles firm of Myers, Darling and Hinton to buy Mexican tomatoes and arrange their shipment to the United States. In need of a boat that would allow him to ship tomatoes between Mexican ports and inspect other agricultural products being offered for sale, Macintosh advanced Wheeler and Taylor money to buy fuel and supplies. The trader then accompanied them on a cruise to Mazatlán where the pair hoped to locate a paying freight customer. During the voyage, Macintosh gained a better understanding of the capabilities of the Agassiz, and by the time they arrived in Mazatlán, had advanced additional funds that brought the total owed him to $1,600, which the partners agreed to repay from their future earnings. The only condition to the loan was that Macintosh would receive first rights to the Alexander Agassiz whenever he had perishable goods to ship.
For the next six weeks Macintosh traveled aboard the schooner as “supercargo,” supervising the handling and transfer of his produce as it was shipped between Magdalena Bay, Todos Santos, San José, La Paz, and Guaymas. Observing the haphazard manner in which Wheeler and Taylor conducted business, and seeing the shipping company sliding deeper into debt, Macintosh became increasingly concerned about the money that he had advanced the pair. When he learned that there was a $5,000 mortgage on the Agassiz owed to the University of California and further debts to the Mexican government, he took immediate action to protect his loan by requiring the partners to sign a hipoteca (mortgage) for $1,600 on the schooner. The terms of the hipoteca allowed Wheeler and Taylor to operate the boat only within specific limits, provided they employed a captain of whom Macintosh or his agent approved, and each month that the Agassiz was in operation Macintosh would receive $200 of the money owed to him. If they did not operate the vessel for any three consecutive months, foreclosure could be made.
At this juncture, Frank Wheeler decided that he had had enough of the shipping business. He walked away from the impending financial disaster and returned to Los Angeles, leaving his partner to run the business.
As Taylor brought the painful story to a close, Maude was dumbfounded at the level to which their promising venture had declined. In five short months, the company had amassed an accumulated debt of over $11,000, their ship was operating illegally under the Mexican flag, placing it under the threat of seizure by the U.S. government and making its owners subject to arrest and imprisonment, there was little prospect of the schooner operating “in the black” any time soon, yet if the Agassiz did not continue to haul cargo, Macintosh would foreclose on his mortgage. Abandoning the effort and fleeing to the United States as her stepbrother Frank had done must have seemed a tempting alternative to Maude, but owning the shipping company was her life’s dream.
“Wheeler and Taylor had made a mess of things,” she would later reflect, “but the life appealed to me, I confess, with all of its danger and worries, and troubles . . . Perhaps I have adventurous blood in my veins—and I don’t like to give up.”
Maude and her partner discussed what to do next. Taylor informed her that he was planning to take the boat south in search of freight jobs that would help pay down their debt and “show good faith in his works.” The Agassiz was loaded with fuel and provisions for Taylor and an interpreter to make a trip down the coast to Manzanillo in search of customers. But half an hour before their departure, the interpreter came to Maude’s hotel and informed her that “Mr. Taylor told me to say goodbye to my friends because we are going on a long trip.” Taylor had also advised him that he was going to take the Agassiz as far south as he could, and when things became too hot, would either sell the boat or ditch it, and “Miss Lochrane can whistle.” The interpreter told Maude that he refused to go on such a trip, and suggested that she travel in his place.
When Taylor boarded the schooner he was surprised to find Maude already there, with bags packed, waiting for him. The double-crossing partner argued that she wasn’t needed on the voyage, and accused her of checking up on him—which was entirely true. Eventually, he was forced to accept the fact that his scheme had been foiled, and the pair departed for Manzanillo together.
When Maude returned to Mazatlán, trouble was waiting. While she was gone, the Mexican captain of the port had informed government officials that she was planning to take down the Mexican flag on the Agassiz and replace it with American colors. From a friendly Mexican who was able to speak broken English, she learned that the port authorities were now at work trying to have her arrested. Maude hurried to the telegraph office and wired John Elliott, the collector of customs in Los Angeles, asking him to send a telegram to the U.S. consul in Mazatlán advising him that the Alexander Agassiz was American-owned, and directing that he assist her in restoring the American flag on the vessel. Consul W. E. Chapman filed paperwork naming Maude Lochrane as the master of the Agassiz (so that the boat would have an American flag captain) and the U.S. flag was raised on the schooner. Maude’s quick action ended the attempt by the Mexican authorities to have her imprisoned.
Another problem that Maude faced was the shared ownership of the Alexander Agassiz, which was restricting her ability to make legally binding business decisions. Gaining full ownership of Pacific Coast Trading would not prove a difficult task, since by now her partners had long given up any hope of success. She first contacted her stepbrother Frank Wheeler, who offered to sign over his interest in the company after all outstanding debts had been paid. She agreed, and secured a power of attorney signed by Frank and Minnie Wheeler to dispose of their interest in the Agassiz under that stipulation. After nearly being arrested with Maude by the Mexican port officials, and as deep in debt as his partners, William Taylor also agreed to leave the partnership, selling his interest in the schooner to Maude for $110 with the proviso that she would assume all outstanding debts against the boat and the company. Under these terms she acquired Taylor’s stake in the firm as well.
Maude was now the sole owner of the Pacific Coast Trading and Shipping Company—and fully responsible for its obligations. Her first order of business was to legally transfer the ship to Mexican registry so that it could operate within Mexican coastal waters at a profit or be sold to a buyer in Mexico. She visited Consul W. E. Chapman to seek his support in changing the schooner’s registry, but Chapman refused.
“The Alexander Agassiz is an American boat and shall not sail under any other flag than American,” he told her firmly.
She appealed by wire to the U.S. Shipping Board, requesting that she be allowed to either change the registry to the Mexican flag or sell the boat. A month later the response came from Washington: “Do not change the flag or sell boat.” Chapman advised her not to expect the shipping board to reverse their opinion; after government bureaucrats made a decision, they would not take the time to go over the matter again or reverse their decision.
With no alternative, Maude continued to pursue freight business between Mexican coastal ports under the crippling handicap of American registry. She managed to secure a contract to carry a cargo of Pierce Coal Oil to Topolobampo and was able to return with a load of alfalfa, but freight rates had fallen again and margins were slim. Then came the contract with Señor Meistiero in which the Agassiz was overloaded with corn and nearly capsized on the way to Manzanillo, a disastrous setback.
Adding to her woes, after months of hard use, the schooner’s engines were now running poorly and the boat was in need of general repair. She inquired around Mazatlán harbor, searching for someone capable of operating and repairing marine engines. In the American store she met a mining man named Osborn who had a good understanding of oil and gasoline engines, but he declined her offer to work on the Agassiz. The shaky financial position of Pacific Coast Trading was widely known in the port, and with her forward manner, Maude struck him as an adventuress.
At this dark moment, she had the good fortune to locate an experienced marine engineer, a man with a reputation for overhauling gas-powered engines and repairing boats. When he was not engaged in a repair project, he ran a boardinghouse in Mazatlán to make ends meet. She had met him the previous July at the American Consulate. When he came to look the Agassiz over, she noticed that he had a revolver in his pocket, but there was nothing unusual in that; a lot of men in Mexico carried guns for personal protection. She was worn out and glad to find somebody to look after things, and it was clear the engineer knew what he was doing. She hired him on the spot—an American slacker named Cornelius Heintz.
Heintz took the helm and piloted the Alexander Agassiz into the estuary, then waited for high tide, and skillfully ran the schooner up onto the beach as far as possible. Mazatlán had no dry dock at the time, and beaching was the only way to service a boat out of water. He started working on the Agassiz even while the tide was still running out, almost as if he had an important deadline to meet. Heintz produced a work crew to assist him in his labors, an unusually industrious group of foreigners—two Norwegians and a Dutchman—who came aboard at different times and were similarly skilled at boat repair. They were clearly men who knew the sea, their rolled sleeves revealing an assortment of colorful nautical tattoos.
Working under Heintz’s supervision, the men added a new keel, recaulked the hull, mended the sails, and set to work overhauling the engines, which had become fouled with seawater. Maude marveled at the speed and efficiency with which they carried out their tasks, achieving more in two or three days than the local laborers did in two to three weeks.
Perhaps her good fortune in locating Heintz was an omen that her luck was about to change?
Maude placed great confidence in fortune-tellers, spiritualists, and clairvoyants. Before she organized the Pacific Coast Trading and Shipping Company, a clairvoyant had told her that she would go off on a long voyage and make her fortune. It was this prediction that had sustained her through the months of disappointment and hardship. A few days before Heintz appeared, Maude had received an overture from a sea captain named Fritz Bauman for a voyage to the South Seas, and she knew at last the clairvoyant’s prophesy would soon come true.