The Pacific Pearl Company
Harvesting Shells and Pearls in Panamá and Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula

Three seasons of field work in Panamá (2004, 2006 and 2008) demonstrated that the craft at Isla San Telmo is Sub Marine Explorer. Designed by German-American engineer Julius H. Kroehl (1820–1867), and built at the Brooklyn shipyard of Ariel Patterson, Sub Marine Explorer was financed by a group of businessmen who incorporated the Pacific Pearl Company of New York to capitalize the craft’s construction and operation (Silka 2008). While one aspect of the Company’s business plan was an intended sale of the craft’s design to the United States Navy, the principal focus of the Pacific Pearl Company was the recovery of pearls and oyster shells from the Pacific pearl beds of Panamá and Mexico’s Baja California peninsula (Pacific Pearl Company 1866). 

Sub Marine Explorer employed an ingenious system of pressurized air and salt water ballast tanks that allowed the craft to submerge, navigated by a hand-cranked propeller, and hover over the sea bed. The pressurized air was then employed to equalize the interior of the submarine to the ambient pressure of the surrounding water. When the sub’s working chamber equalized, hatches on the bottom of the craft were opened and allowed workers to harvest shells and pearls, or conduct other work as needed (Pacific Pearl Company 1866). 

Following successful trials of the submarine off New York in 1866, Kroehl partially disassembled it, shipped it to Panamá, and then reassembled Sub Marine Explorer on the Pacific shores of the Bay of Panamá. After initial trials in Panamá, Kroehl died of fever, and the submarine languished for over a year. In the summer of 1869, a new engineer, sent to Panamá by the Pacific Pearl Company, took the submarine to Isla San Telmo and reportedly gathered tons of shells and some pearls. However, for unspecified reasons, Sub Marine Explorer was apparently abandoned at Isla San Telmo and essentially disappeared from the historical record (Delgado 2006:231–232). 

 

Stock certificate for Pacific Pearl Company issued in June 1867

Detail from the Tallis map of Panamá (1851), showing the location of the Pearl Islands. James Delgado Collection.