San
Joaquin County
Biographies
JAMES BURNS
Prominent among the best informed
shipbuilders in California may well be rated James Burns, the efficient and
popular superintendent at the shipyards of the California Navigation & Improvement
Company at Stockton. He is a native of
Belfast, Ireland, and when a boy worked in the shipyards along the Clyde, in
Scotland. In 1882 he came to the United
States and worked for a short time at the Cramp shipyards in Philadelphia; but
in July of the same year he left the City of Brotherly Love and sailed on the
steamer “Queen of the Pacific,” through the Straits of Magellan and up to San
Francisco. His first trip to Stockton
was in October, 1882. He was not long in
finding employment on the steamers Roberts Island and the barge West Side,
owned by H. J. Cochrane, and he also worked on the steamer Empire City, owned
by the Cornwall Company. He quit steamboating for a time and worked at the Crown Flour Mill
in Stockton, until 1898; and then he was assistant superintendent of the
building of the steamer H. J. Cochrane, a passenger and freight vessel which
ran in connection with the People’s Railroad, later taken over by the Santa Fe
System. The steamer was the fastest
river boat on the Coast, and had the largest boilers and engine; and she made
the round trip daily from San Francisco to Stockton.
Since 1901, however, James Burns has
been in the employ of the California Navigation & Improvement Company in
charge of the boat building and repairs at their yard in Stockton; and there,
on the average, some fifty men are regularly employed, and this number is sometimes
increased to even 100 men. Usually two
steamers are rebuilt yearly, new boilers and new machinery being installed, and
among the craft turned out there, the Capital City, a new steamer running
between Sacramento and San Francisco, was repaired at a cost of about
$60,000. The steamer McDonald was built
at the plant, as were also three steamers for the Yukon River traffic in
Alaska. The plant is fully equipped for
all such work with the most modern machinery.
After forty years of continuous service on the San
Joaquin River, our subject may be credited with a knowledge of conditions
hereabouts well worth possessing.
When James Burns married, he chose
for his wife Miss Annie E. McGahan, a native of
Ireland; and their union has been blessed with the birth of three children: John J., James E., and Mary Theresa. He belongs to the Yosemite Club and to the
Lodge No. 218 of the Elks at Stockton, where he spends half of his time,
residing the other half in Oakland.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
984. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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